These NLCs form in the upper mesosphere at an altitude of about 85 km (around 50 miles), which is above 99.999% of the atmosphere. It is the same altitude where meteors and thunderstorm sprites occur, but somewhat below the altitude of the aurora.

Average temperature profile of the atmosphere (adapted from a presentation by Prof. Nicholas Mitchell, The University of Bath).

They are visible about 1-2 hours after sunset or before sunrise, when other clouds are in darkness but these are still illuminated by the sun due to their high altitude. It is believed that water vapor from oxidation of methane condenses on meteor dust, leading to the ice cloud formation.

The conditions for NLC formation require extremely cold temperatures, as low as -150 deg. F. I’ve been looking for online sources of near real time satellite data which might be used to monitor them, but there isn’t much out there (more on that, below). The AIM instrument on the TIMED satellite provides daily images, but for some reason the clouds the satellite views seem to be only from the latitude of central Canada northward.

NLCs have been increasing in recent decades. They are always more prevalent during solar minimum conditions (which we are now experiencing), when there is less solar energy heating the extreme upper atmosphere. But there is also a long-term trend upward:

(a) SBUV merged seasonal average IWC (ice water content) values for three different latitude bands: 50N-64N (purple triangles), 64N-74N (green crosses) and 74N-82N (blue squares). The solid lines show multiple regression fits to the data for the periods 1979-1997 and 1998-2018. (b) SBUV merged seasonal average IWC values for 50S-64S, 64S-74S, and 74S-82S. The solid lines show fits for the periods 1979-1997 and 1998-2018. (source)

The long term increase could be the result of increasing CO2, which cools the upper atmosphere while it warms the lower atmosphere. Another possibility includes an increase in atmospheric methane, which gets oxidized into water vapor at high altitudes. Finally, some modelling suggests that climate warming should increase the Brewer-Dobson circulation, which cools the summer mesosphere (more on that, below).

Anecdotally, the most dramatic increase has been at mid-latitudes where no previous reports of NLC sightings exist. In the last couple days NLCs have been observed as far south as Joshua Tree, CA (34 deg. N) and Albuquerque, New Mexico (35 deg. N). There is no historical record of NLC sightings, anywhere, before 1880.

One of the interesting things about the mesosphere where NLCs form (and something which will mess with the heads of some here who like to argue with me) is that the summer hemisphere is colder, and the winter hemisphere warmer, in the mesosphere.

If only radiative heating by the sun (and cooling by greenhouse gases…anything that gains energy from the sun must have a way to lose that energy) were responsible for mesospheric temperatures, the opposite would be true, with the summer hemisphere being warmer, as it is in the troposphere and stratosphere.

The reason for the reversal is the Brewer-Dobson circulation, which causes upwelling (and thus adiabatic cooling) in the summer mesosphere. which That rising air forces subsidence (sinking air, and thus adiabatic warming) in the winter hemisphere.

This hemispheric difference is clearly seen in upper mesospheric temperatures from channel 20 on the DMSP SSMIS instrument. These data are not widely available, and this pair of images, one year apart, was provided to me by Steve Swadley at Naval Research Laboratory – Monterey.

The SSMIS imagery can’t be directly related to NLC sightings because it is a vertical average for a fairly deep layer in the upper mesosphere, while NLCs form in only the very coldest layer in the upper part of that deeper layer, at the “mesopause”. But I would wager they are correlated.

I think some clever manipulation of this SSMIS channel with the one below it could provide a useful monitoring tool for NLC formation. The SSMIS instruments have been flying since before the last solar minimum, so it would be interesting to see how much colder the current solar minimum is than the last in the mesosphere. I’d love to do this myself, but considerable time would be required for data downloading, reading, analyzing, and displaying the data, and I already have a day job.

479 Responses to “Noctilucent Clouds and the Curious Cold of Summer Viewed by SSMIS”

That’s your usual pathetic excuse, isn’t it? “Every one knows”! Just like the Indian Rope trick, or the travesty of Trenberth’s missing heat. I’m sure you’d paste the description time after time after time . . . , if you could only find it.

How hard can it be? Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation can be expressed in a couple of lines. Must be exceptionally abstruse and arcane, this missing GHE description. Do you think it might take 30 years or so of studying how to add and divide numbers (averaging weather records), before someone is allowed to view the sacred GHE description?

“Never said no one knows. I didn’t say you did, did I? You are just making up false quotes – hoping someone will believe you. Not terribly smart – people can read for themselves, you know.

You keep implying that a useful GHE description exists, but you are keeping it hidden, for sone bizarre pseudoscientific climate cultist reason.

What are you scared of, David? Or don’t you know how to copy and paste?

Maybe the descriptions only exist in the fantasy worlds of other delusional GHE true believers! I agree, it’s very hard to produce something that doesn’t exist. Have you tried asking NASA or the fake Nobel Prize winning Michael Mann for a useful GHE description?

Maybe you could try Google? Give it a good hard go, and report back, if you like.

Unfortunately, the contents of your fantasy are not generally admissible as statements of fact. I am pleased you think I have provided an “example” of something you “meant”.

Do you need a bit of advice on how to talk in cryptic and pointless riddles, or are you happy with your present standard?

Maybe you could spend more time trying to find a useful GHE description. I doubt that anybody is seriously concerned about your “meanings”, and even less about the “examples” which I so graciously provided to help you out.

Actually I have put a major effort into locating such a description David. I searched for the response to the Gerlich and Tscheuschner paper falsifying the greenhouse effect. I was amazed to find it listed on a website of a popular journal and was really amazed that they won’t even sell access to it. I even requested access and was ignored.

It must be too much of an embarrassment to allow getting passed around in public. My judgement is the greenhouse effect theory is only argued via the logical fallacy argumentum ad ignorantiam, otherwise knows as arguing from ignorance, as in “we are too unimaginative to think of anything else” precisely the same argument for the Ptolemy Theory.

David Appell says:
“Well, upper atmospheric temperatures are getting cooler because of mans enhancement of the greenhouse effect.”

Which greenhouse theory is that? As I understand it the mainstream theory has evolved to one that emissions become cooler not because the upper atmosphere is cooler but because the radiating surface rises higher in the atmosphere into a cooler zone of the atmosphere creating less radiation to space.

Its enough to drive a man crazy of all the harebrained theories running around like so many lemmings.

“Ken, the upper atmosphere is expected to cool with anthropogenic warming of the lower atmosphere.”

And why would this be? This about as stupid as saying that increasing the amount of CO2 between the Sun and a thermometer makes the thermometer hotter.

Are you quite mad? Do you really think that heating one end of a column of gas somehow reduces the temperature of the other end? If the remote and of the column is around 4 K or so, good luck with making it colder by heating it!

Mikey, If your column is within the atmosphere, the temperature change with altitude (or pressure level) clearly isn’t a monotonic decline, as one may see in Roy’s graphic above. In that graphic, the “temperature” at the highest elevation isn’t 3K, it’s closer to 353 K (80 deg C). the lowest temperature in that profile is about 183 K (-90 deg C). So, you must explain how your comment has anything to do with the observed data?

Do you really think that heating one end of a column of gas somehow reduces the temperature of the other end? If the remote and (sic) of the column is around 4 K or so, good luck with making it colder by heating it!

I was just attempting to point out that the temperature vs. altitude within said column exhibits several different trends, caused by multiple processes. The surface temperature is the result of the combined effects of these processes which act to insulate the Earth from the surrounding deep space with 3 K background microwave radiation. By changing some of those processes, humanity is in effect changing the insulation, the result being a change in surface temperature. CO2 acts like a radiation shield, except that CO2’s effects occur at discrete wavelengths, not the wide range of wavelengths emitted by a solid body.

If you don’t like the graphic, which is a simplified presentation from decades of investigations of the atmosphere, it’s your responsibility to provide an alternative explanation, backed by hard data. You, as usual, refuse to discuss the scientific background.

“Have a go at trying to define temperature in some consistent way relating to the atmosphere as depicted in the graphic.”

You took exception to the facts I presented, namely that there is a notional temperature gradient from the surface to the nominal TOA, which has a notional temperature of the surrounding space, around 4 K.

However, the concept of “temperature” as is generally understood is meaningless, where gas is extremely rarefied. Hence my invitation to you to define temperature in a consistent way. I note you declined my invitation, which was a wise choice.

Here’s what somebody else said-

“You cannot measure the temperature of the thermosphere using a thermometer, because the measured temperature would then say more about the amount of radiation energy received from the Sun than about the very thin gas in the thermosphere. The temperature of the thermosphere is deduced from other things, such as the gas density, which itself is measured from the slowing down of satellites by friction with the gas.”

If you want something relevant from Wikipedia-

“In a quantity of gas, the average velocity of any one molecule is measured by the gas’s temperature, but the velocities of individual molecules change as they collide with one another, gaining and losing kinetic energy. ”

At TOA, velocities can exceed escape velocity, and nominal temperatures can exceed tens of thousands of K. The concept of temperature is not consistent across different types of matter. Hence weather presenters’ “feels like” temperatures, or apparent temperature.

Brightly coloured graphics can be misleading, regardless of their author. You are free to believe any nonsense you like. No CO2 heating. No GHE.

MF, I don’t claim to understand the physics at the highest levels of the atmosphere, even to that elevation shown at the top of Dr. Spencer’s graphic. Yes, I recall that the Earth loses hydrogen gas from the highest levels. But, you have again deftly side stepped the question of the reason for the temperature profile at any level from the surface upwards, focusing only on the thermosphere which presents vastly different physics from that below.

I contend that the atmosphere in total acts to insulate the surface from the intense cold of deep space and that greenhouse gases are a significant component of that result. The fact that radiation shields do work leads one to conclude that greenhouse gases also act as a partial radiation shield, as in, the Green Plate Effect.

I hope that you are aware that the measurements used by Dr. Spencer depend theoretically similar to that of the theoretical basis of the greenhouse effect, thus when one accepts those monthly results, one is reaffirming one’s acceptance of greenhouse gas theory as well.

“MF, I dont claim to understand the physics at the highest levels of the atmosphere, “. I do – well, more than you, obviously. Why do you argue with me if you dont understand what you are arguing about?

You also wrote –

” . . .theoretically similar to that of the theoretical basis of the greenhouse effect, . . .”

There is no “theoretical basis” for the greenhouse effect. Nobody has ever managed to usefully describe the so-called greenhouse effect. Therefore, no chance of a testable GHE hypothesis, far less a GHE theory being developed.

Just more pseudoscientific evasion, a back of second rate bumblers attempting to browbeat their betters into believing self-serving nonsense.

By the way, hydrogen doesn’t float to the top of the atmosphere, any more than CO2 sinks to the surface. Wikipedia editors, in particular, are subject to fits of wishful thinking.

As to insulation, the atmosphere serves to insulate in both directions – insulators do not care which side is facing the warmer, and which the colder. Hence, temperatures extremes are greater on the airless Moon – hotter and colder!

“Ken, the upper atmosphere is expected to cool with anthropogenic warming of the lower atmosphere.”

Thats based on the “insulation model” of the atmosphere, likening it to a solid. However, such an effect is not seen in the ocean, a liquid. A gas, considered to be a liquid for the purposes of heat transport, is even less likely to remain static in the way explained by climate science.

I would place it in the realm of possibility, however, there needs to be far more explanation of how the heat effect leaps over the stratosphere and affects the mesosphere. As I see it job one is in proving that increased height of CO2 emissions is actually in the troposphere, then job 2 is to establish that any such effect isn’t immediately erased by a typical insulation model that would force the intermediate atmosphere to warm and convect.

So it certainly is one thing to extrapolate reasonable ideas of how a greenhouse effect might vary, its quite another to give much certainty to any idea of how it might occur.

Because we say so and our billions in grants to model the effect says loudly it must be true. . . .or at a minimum it makes the grant holders to say so loudly.

Ken,
If anything has been constant for billions of years it has been change. That goes for the temperature at the top of the atmosphere. Natural variability also includes ice ages as well as very warm periods where there is little ice. And, we can’t do a damn thing about it.

But natural emissions from natural fires (which, according to you, created the Antarctic ice cover – up to 4.8 km thick), can’t create another “ice age”?

You can’t even define what an “ice age” is can you? When was the first “ice age”? What caused it? Why did it go away?

Don’t know? And yet, you seem quite sure about the future, even though you know nothing about the past, it seems. This sounds more like fervent climate cultism – based on pseudoscientific nonsense.

All your blather is pointless – you cannot even point to one measurable benefit to mankind of the so-called “climate science”, can you? Why would any rational person take notice of the incessant proclamations of impending doom, based on nothing more that the delusional thinking of fools or frauds?

Really? Well, it couldn’t be that CO2 stopped the ice forming, could it? Antarctica used to be ice free.

So the logical conclusion, based on observed fact, is that CO2 must result in cooling – hence Antarctic ice. That would fit with four and a half billion years of surface cooling, as CO2 has always been present in the atmosphere, hasn’t it?

Maybe I misunderstood you.

If you could provide a copy of the GHE description that you use, these things could be cleared up, I guess.

It is hard to figure out what you are trying to say. If CO2 makes things hotter, how did Antarctica get covered by ice? Did the GHE stop working for a few million years?

I believe you said “You can never ask too many questions.” I can ask plenty more, if you wish, but you can’t provide any cogent answers, so there’s not much point, is there.

BTW – the latest news is that
“Simultaneous heat waves scorched land areas all over the Northern Hemisphere last summer, killing hundreds and hospitalizing thousands while intensifying destructive and deadly wildfires.

A study published this week in the journal Earths Future concludes that this heat wave epidemic would not have occurred without human-induced climate change.

The alarming part? There are signs record-setting heat waves are beginning anew this summer signaling, perhaps, that these exceptional and widespread heat spells are now the norm.”

“Its a shame you dont know the evidence for the enhanced GHE, since Ive given it many times here.

More evasionary blather, eh? If you cant even provide a useful description of the GHE, all your evidence is pointless, isnt it?

There is evidence that the surface cools at night, and increasing the amount of CO2 between heat source and a thermometer makes the thermometer colder. If you could describe the GHE, maybe a testable GHE hypothesis could be formulated.

Its part of the scientific process, which pseudoscientific climate cultists abhor. I wonder why?

Carry on David. Produce all your evidence to support something you cant quite define or describe. What a fool.

“There are signs record-setting heat waves are beginning anew this summer signaling, perhaps, that these exceptional and widespread heat spells are now the norm.

Signs. Portents. Omens. Signals. Perhaps.

Good grief. Spare me the climastrological predictions! Whats the point?

The signs are that the pseudoscientific cultists and their gullible followers are becoming ever more desperate in their attempts to frighten horses and small children, at the same time keeping the money flowing to support the cult leaders.

And not a darn thing of benefit to man nor beast has come forth from the vast expenditure on this pseudoscientific farce.

I presume by ‘make the next ice age moot’ you mean that the next ice age will not happen if CO2 emissions continue?
If this were true, my response would be… let’s put a few more logs on the fire to make sure. If it were possible for humans to stop the ice age cycles, this would be man’s greatest achievement. An Earth in the bottom of a glacial period would be much more inhospitable to human life than anything imagined by the AGW crowd.

I post occasionally and may have put the ‘k’ in there in the past, not sure. But, barry is my name, so not gonna get me to drop that…

I assume from your comment that you think my comment was not sensible?

I’m merely pointing out that there is a flaw in the following argument:
we have emitted CO2 –> we have changed the natural balance/cycles of the earth –> we won’t have another ice age (i.e. glacial period) –> we should stop emitting CO2.
The flaw being that avoiding glacial periods would actually be a very large benefit. I’m not arguing as to whether or not global warming is going to cause some problems, merely that the benefit of avoiding future ice ages would far outweigh any damages from warming…
I also think it’s at least very naive to think that humans have that much control over mother earth…

Humans have already emitted about 620 GtC through 2018 — about 40 Gt CO2 (11 GtC) a year. Assuming this doesnt increase with time, the lower limit of 1000 GtC will be reached in about 35 years, the upper limit in about 80 years.

If I’m interpreting your interpretation correctly, in about 80 years at the current rate of CO2 emissions, we should be at a cumulative CO2 emission amount that would guarantee the next glacial period is skipped…

And, then can you please explain to me why we would ever attempt to reduce CO2 emissions as other energy sources are still more expensive if we get the added benefit of avoiding a glacial period? This would be the single biggest accomplishment of mankind if it were true… The benefits to humanity of avoiding the next glaciation would far outweigh any downsides to some warming.

Based on your numbers, right now seems like a very bad time to reduce CO2 emissions because we would actually risk not stopping the next glaciation…

You are a fool. Respect is earned, not commanded, as far as I am concerned.

I do as I wish, whether you like it or not. I assume you do the same, but maybe you are a grovelling lickspittle, bending to every wayfaring strangers will. You may take as much offence as you like – Ill probably have a bit left.

As to David Appell, there is certainly a David Appel PhD. Does David Appell have a PhD, or has he assumed David Appels identity? Maybe he forgot how to spell his name for a few years? What do you think?

I dont know, and I dont care.

Still no useful GHE description is there? CO2 heats nothing. The Earth has cooled over the last four and a half billion years. As to my title, thats for me to know, and you to find out.

I have addressed Roy as “Doc” for many years both here in posts and in some past e-mails, some of which he responded to without any mention of it. It is an expression of respect. Just as it was when I was addressed by the same moniker by my teammates when I was an SF medic (Described by the Army as a “Physician substitute”).

“myki says:
June 16, 2019 at 7:46 PM
BTW the latest news is that
Simultaneous heat waves scorched land areas all over the Northern Hemisphere last summer, killing hundreds and hospitalizing thousands while intensifying destructive and deadly wildfires.
A study published this week in the journal Earths Future concludes that this heat wave epidemic would not have occurred without human-induced climate change….”

LOl! We’ve never had heat waves before. Tell me why, after about 3 decades of supposed human caused warming, has the record official high surface temperature of 134 F recorded July 10, 1913 at Furnace Creek, CA not been surpassed anywhere on earth?

And how did it get to 108 F at Winamac, Indiana June 14th, 1897 with multiple records of 100 F or higher stretching across the US from Indiana to Norther CA that day?

As usual the claims of the alarmists require either historical revisionism or just plain ignoring previous records.

Yawn….
How predictable. If the study is so wrong, publish a paper contradicting it. You will be famous!
I bet you dont because you cant.
Now, for another laugh, lets see you try deny this:
” Ice is melting in unprecedented ways as summer approaches in the Arctic. In recent days, observations have revealed a record-challenging melt event over the Greenland ice sheet, while the extent of ice over the Arctic Ocean has never been this low in mid-June during the age of weather satellites.

Climate, (the statistics of weather) is demonstrably predictable. As any student can tell you, it is hotter near the equator than at the pole, it is hotter in summer than in winter, it is colder on Mars etc etc.
Adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere leads to warming and the melting of sea ice. Simple!

BTW, weather is predictable, with some skill, out to about 7 to 10 days.

rah, That article on WUWT cherry picks data from NYC, a location which was buried under glacier ice some 20k years ago at LGM. Long Island is a glacial moraine, as is Cape Cod. Areas in between are still experiencing glacial rebound after the mass of the land glaciers melted away after the end of LGM. The same is happening around Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Raw data from such locations does not present the true change in sea level.

“Sure melt is up but SMB has blunted its effect a great deal.”
Huh?
SMB (surface mass balance) is the result of solid precipitation minus evaporation and melt.
Therefore SMB is dependent on surface melt.
You appear to fail to understand this simple concept.
Your other ramblings are also worthless.

Using a 25-y time series of precision satellite altimeter data from TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1, Jason-2, and Jason-3, we estimate the climate-changedriven acceleration of global mean sea level over the last 25 y to be 0.084 0.025 mm/y2.

Fluctuations in rates of sea level rise should be expected from multi-decadal fluctuations. Perhaps the 72 years cycle that climate forecasters have observed for over 300 years. Current rates aren’t even matching “average” natural variation that has occurred over the past 15,000 years, much less peak rates of change during that period of time.

BTW the recent “record heat wave” in India was not a record.https://realclimatescience.com/2019/06/a-cult-based-on-misinformation/
That heatwave was/is a result of the Monsoons arriving late and thus the sky over essentially the whole country was cloudless for many days and conditions hotter and dryer than usual. Again, they ignored previous records to lie to us. Just as they ignore the fact that the Arctic had extensive melt in the 1920’s.

While the average temperature for the US has increased the incidence of heatwaves has declined despite repetitive El Ninos. The number of cold days is also declining. IOW our climate here has been moderating with a declining number of extremes in temperature over the last 30 years. Most of warmth lately has been a result of warmer nights due to higher humidity.https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/6/

rah said…”LOl! We’ve never had heat waves before. Tell me why, after about 3 decades of supposed human caused warming, has the record official high surface temperature of 134 F recorded July 10, 1913 at Furnace Creek, CA not been surpassed anywhere on earth?”

Can you post a link to research that demonstrates that there is broad based support among scientists that 134F would be surpassed in Death Valley by 2019?

Also, I’d like for you to review the research by Chris Burt and William Reid concern that 134F reading. What are your thoughts regarding the accuracy of that reading?

Nope! Don’t have to. Common sense is all it takes to understand the concept that the 30+ years of warming claimed should have produced a new higher official surface temperature record somewhere on earth especially since surface station coverage globally has increased a bit in century+ since that record was set. Even the same station with solar panels, asphalt parking lots, and an RV park next to it has not matched the record in all that time.

My thought about the accuracy of that reading is that it has been accepted as the official one and poked at an prodded several times with no change. And BTW, I also wonder why we have not had a period in the US that has come close to matching that of the incredible string of heatwaves they suffered through May-June of 1934?

What if the 129.2F reported Death Valley in 2013 is the highest temperature recorded there?

I do find it interesting that the 134F observations was called into question from the start (Monthly Weather Review June 1915). The observer had questionable credibility, a dozen or so other observers in the area reported no such extreme heat nor was there even a heat wave occurring during this period in desert southwest. And the meteorological conditions occurring at the time would have made 134F observation impossible on a theoretical basis as well despite the fact that the sighting conditions at 1913 were even more favorable for anomalously high readings than today.

But let’s assume the 134F observation is legit. The fact that an observation at that particular site has not gone above 130F since is not inconsistent with the fact that the global mean temperature is increasing. And besides the monthly mean temperatures at Death Valley have been setting records recently. In fact, the hottest month ever recorded there occurred just last year.

Assuming that ice growth mainly responds to insolation and CO2 forcing, this analogy [MIS 19c] suggests that the end of the current interglacial would occur within the next 1500 years, if atmospheric CO2 concentrations did not exceed 240+/-5 ppmv.

You really are a gullible chappie, aren’t you? You obviously believe pseudoscientific rubbish like “bipolar-seesaw climate variability” (meaningless gobbledygook), and that computer programs using different inputs are “experiments”!

Your linked paper is wishful thinking from start to finish – any relationship to science is strictly coincidental.

The authors are at least a little less dim than you – they no doubt got paid to write this piece of fiction.

And, of course, they paid Nature to publish their nonsense with someone else’s money! How clever is that?

Scraping the bottom of the barrel here. Pathetic, really.
“Nature is a British multidisciplinary scientific journal, first published on 4 November 1869.[1] It is one of the most recognizable scientific journals in the world, and was ranked the world’s most cited scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports and is ascribed an impact factor of 40.137, making it one of the world’s top academic journals.[2][3] It is one of the few remaining academic journals that publishes original research across a wide range of scientific fields.”

The motto of the Royal Society is “Nullius in Verba.” Very roughly, “believe no one’s word”.

As Feynman said “Science ifs belief in the ignorance of experts.”

Your gotcha is completely pointless. You are dimwitted if you believed Michael Mann’s claim of Nobel Prizewinner status, as he claimed in court documents. Just as stupid would be to continue to believe a Nature paper after retraction!

I’m not sure what your point is. Court cases do not change physical facts, as far as I am aware. Good for Michael Mann, if he feels it’s worth the time and money to get a possibly insincere apology from a stranger.

But hey, anything is possible from a bearded, balding, bumbler who fraudulently claimed to be a Nobel Laureate in court documents.

Michael Mann – a true warrior and scientific hero:
“I have been vilified on the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal and other conservative media outlets, and subject to inquisitions by fossil fuel industry-funded senators, congressmen, and attorneys general,” Mann wrote in Scientific American.

“Yet, in the 20 years since the original hockey stick publication, independent studies, again and again, have overwhelmingly reaffirmed our findings, including the key conclusion: recent warming is unprecedented over at least the past millennium,” he said.
Go Michael! Sue the bastards!

David Appell says:
June 19, 2019 at 9:11 PM
“Flynn doesnt even try to disprove the science or prove anything to the contrary.”

And there it is in its all its glory the single and only defense of a greenhouse alarmist theory founded in the logical fallacy argumentum ad ignorantiam. In other words, I am going to stomp my feet like a 3 year old and claim that my theory is right because you can’t prove it wrong. Does God exist David?

So, basically, they have a ‘model’ for the onset of glaciation. They look back at historical markers for the forcing quantity in that marker and decide that since in the past it only happened when the marker forced enough and the CO2 was below a certain level that it won’t happen… they say ‘Assuming that ice growth mainly responds to insolation and CO2 forcing, this analogy suggests…’

So, based on a model and lots of assumptions, you’re convinced that 500,000 yrs of stable glacial/interglacial cycles have been interrupted by man? Maybe, time will tell… Time will also tell how accurate or inaccurate the current climate changes ‘models’ and assumptions will be. The only way we’ll know the temperature 50 or 100 years from now is to go outside with our thermometer if we’re still alive. By then, I’m sure we’ll know a lot more and at least have a lot more data to compare to.

The one thing I would note though is something like 95% of the last 500,000 yrs has been substantially colder than now and probably 80-90% of that has been (I’m guessing but fairly sure) inhospitable to humans in places many societies exist today. From a 30,000ft level the bigger ‘risk’ to humanity is a glacial period. Either way, more CO2 is good. If your link is correct (I think it very doubtful), more CO2 is good and we have avoided the next glacial period for now. If your link is not correct, we should keep trying…

Temperatures were in decline for about eight thousand years, then we got the hockey stick. About 300 ppm might have been just right.

Here’s a more recent paper:https://www.nature.com/articles/nature16494
“Using an ensemble of simulations generated by an Earth system model of intermediate complexity constrained by palaeoclimatic data, we suggest that glacial inception was narrowly missed before the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.”

These results show consistently, that a glacial inception is unlikely to happen within the next approximate 50 ka (when
the next strong drop in Northern Hemisphere summer insolation occurs) if either atmospheric CO2 concentration
remains above 300 ppm or cumulative carbon emissions exceed 1000 Pg C”

David Appell says:
June 19, 2019 at 6:44 PM
“What a laughably stupid answer. Svante goes out and looks at the literature. You sit on your thumb claiming the moon doesnt rotate.

Youre one of those deniers who cant seem to see how ridiculously dumb you are here.”

The moon does not rotate on its own, it is tidal locked to the earth and does not rotate on its own but instead only rotates as the earth rotates and as the earth rotates around the sun, and as the solar system rotates around the Milky Way.

I’ll have to read the articles later… my initial reaction is given the 500,000yr history and the fact we’ve only observed a very small fraction of that I think it highly likely that there are forcings, effects, causes, phenomena in our solar system, sun, planet that we don’t yet know about (cyclic, random, or otherwise). Saying what will happen going forward for ~100,000ish year cycle events based on 100s of years of knowns is just a theory.

I’m not sure about the ‘hockey stick’… I think it’s a fairly mainstream thought that temperatures have been rising naturally for hundreds of years as we have come out of the ‘Little Ice Age.’

If it is possible to prevent a glacial period just by increasing CO2 or cumulative carbon emissions to some magical amount (a theory fraught with assumptions and conjecture to begin with), there is no way one can know with certainty what the ‘magical amount’ is. Given the fact that the benefits of avoiding a glacial period far, far outweigh a little warming, I think it only logical to say we want some buffer built in to make sure and that in general more CO2 is better…

No I don’t see the problem… What I see is a very large benefit. If we continue emitting CO2 and pass 1,500 gigatonnes, we can avoid the next glaciation. There are already hints that the current climate ‘models’ over-predict warming. Even if we do get some warming, this would be a small price to pay for skipping the next glaciation.

Regarding ‘the hockey-stick is settled science’ (can’t reply to your other note…) what hockey-stick do you mean? Temperature? Maybe. What I see is natural warming combined with more recent human effects (this is not just CO2, but also include deforestation, other greenhouse gases, changing land usages on a large scale, etc). Combined, if there is a hockey stick it’s a wimpy one.

But, in the end analysis this is good… because let me tell you how things will play out (barring a killer asteroid or disease wiping out humanity)… we (USA) and other wealthy economies will continue making incremental moves toward going ‘green’. Other places that are still ramping up (China, Russia, India, etc) will continue a steady rise in CO2 emission. In the end, due to the massive inertia in economies and energy infrastructures, 50yrs from now CO2 emissions will be higher, and certainly CO2 levels will be. But, we’ll have more data to see things better and we’ll be able to comfort ourselves with knowing we may not get a glaciation… see, didn’t that cheer you up?

No I don’t see the problem. Humans flourish during the warmer periods. See Minoan, Roman, Medieval warm periods. No one has demonstrated that a warmer world would be devastating. Meanwhile there are lots of historical examples where cooler weather led to famine, disease, social unrest, and, finally, war. Europe lost half its population at the start of the Maunder Minimum.

Warm weather is warm weather. Nobody feels “mean” temperatures much less global mean temperatures. Trying to make a case that warming is bad requires a complete departure from a measure of temperature.

On a global basis is extraordinarily easy to see the world relatively speaking is a cold place. Simply plot out where we live on the globe. Populations are centered around the equator with the high latitudes being essentially unpopulated.

So the climate fear mongering settles in on select ancillary affects like rising sea level, yet sea level has been rising for 15 thousand years and nothing has happened except that the world has become more populated.

There, aha! is the rub and the real concern. Make the world greener and more productive and the freeways continue to get more crowded.

Uh. . . .its an interesting statistic David, especially if you have lived in the Oregon Mountains. Usually in June the last of the snow is melting off the coastal peaks. Since I have lived in the Oregon Mountains its far more interesting than sea ice melting in the Arctic. Have you ever posted anything on that? LMAO!

Carbon-14 is produced in the upper layers of the troposphere and the stratosphere by thermal neutrons absorbed by nitrogen atoms. When cosmic rays enter the atmosphere, they undergo various transformations, including the production of neutrons. The resulting neutrons (1n) participate in the following reaction:

The highest rate of carbon-14 production takes place at altitudes of 9 to 15 km (30,000 to 49,000 ft) and at high geomagnetic latitudes.

The rate of 14C production can be modelled, yielding values of 16,400[12] or 18,800[13] atoms of 14C per second per square meter of the Earth’s surface, which agrees with the global carbon budget that can be used to backtrack,[14] but attempts to measure the production rate directly in situ were not very successful. Production rates vary because of changes to the cosmic ray flux caused by the heliospheric modulation (solar wind and solar magnetic field), and due to variations in the Earth’s magnetic field.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-14
The problem of galactic cosmic rays (GCR) effects on the lower stratosphere and its composition becomes increasingly important in the scientific research. It has grea-test importance in the i nvesti gation of the ozone O3 state. During the 60s and 70s some authors as analyze this problem from the point of view of ozone des-truction by GCR. For the investigation of these processes the formation of nitrogen oxydes and their role in the O3 destruction have been taken into account. The processes are describ ed in details in P . A great interest presents also the ozone formation under the influence of GCR. It is well known that the unique source of charged par-ticles i n the lower stratosphere are the GCR, which consist from protons, a-particles and heavier nuclei (Z>3) with energy >1—2 GeV/nucI. The GCR depose their energy mainly at a height of 10-20 km, where the maximum of the air ionization (maximum of Pfotzer) is. This ionization takes place In the lower stratosphere, where the photo-dissociation rate decr eases ess entially and becomes comparable, even less than the CR ionization rate. At the same time the charged particles are already able for reactions in the atmosphere, whose constant reactions rate is greater with one or two orders than the respective value of free radical processes . The GCR are a source of ozone formation in the lower stratosphere, because of radiol ysis in the oxygen mole-cules. In this way two mechanisms of ozone formation from GCR are observed: first, the radiolysis of the oxygen molecules; second, a participation of ions in the ion -molecular processes in the stratosphere.https://www.researchgate.net/publication/288190725_Ozone_production_by_galactic_cosmic_rays_in_magneto-conjugated_regions_of_the_earth

“Temperatures leap 40 degrees above normal as the Arctic Ocean and Greenland ice sheet see record June melting. [insert picture of sled dogs walking on “open water”]” The Washington Post. This is why global warming alarmists have lost credibility. Currently, the GFS is showing the arctic at maybe +0-2 deg c and the Antarctic with plenty of purple -15 deg c areas. Perhaps we are getting colder.

Dr Myki you completely missed the point. The picture taken as “proof” of global warming showing all the melted water clearly shows that there is SO much ice down there, that the dogs and sled can get around with not much worry. I heard this particular place that has become famous on the internet in the last couple of days has 2 meters of ice. I’d hardly call that open waters. I understand what the difference between the arctic and Antarctic is. I also know where Greenland is. Geez.

The drop in global temps since the 2016 el nino ended has been sharp. We are making what I call bearish pairs between el nino and global temperature. It means El Nino got stronger, but temps still fell. Do not ignore these divergences. It appears the sun is the largest forcer of the earth’s climate. What a crazy idea that the sun is in charge. lol

I totally agree that one picture doesn’t mean anything. It certainly isn’t a smoking gun or anything…not even close. If there is blame to placed for drawing a conclusion from one picture then it seems most of it should be directed toward the media though.

Anyway, to put a more sciency spin on this discussion…what the picture is showing is what is called a melt pond. The interesting thing about these is that they significantly lower the albedo of the ice sheet and cause the ice underneath to melt even faster. It’s an example of a feedback in which polar warming begets more polar warming.

The article said “open water”. That is not the same as a melt pond. Say what’s the temperature in Greenland right now (other than the coast) at noon on nearly the longest day of the year? 20 deg F? lol

If you are not using Dr Spencer’s global temperature data, why are you here? Do you not see a drop from +0.86 deg c to + 0.32 deg c within slightly over a 3 year period as sharp? On top of that, we still have an El Nino. Once that ends and we have a la nina, we will go below baseline. I can’t wait for that day.

David Appell says:
June 19, 2019 at 6:34 PM
Scott R says:
“The drop in global temps since the 2016 el nino ended has been sharp.”

“I doubt you can prove that with actual numbers.

2019 is, so far (thru May), on track to be the 2nd warmest year in the records, according to N.O.A.A., only 0.05 C below 2016’s record.”

David, of the 7 temperature records archived at Wood for Trees, the least amount of cooling among them is 5 times the cooling your are claiming. You need to educate yourself more rather than simply parroting political blogs like a sycophant sucker.

Permafrost at outposts in the Canadian Arctic is thawing 70 years earlier than predicted, an expedition has discovered, in the latest sign that the global climate crisis is accelerating even faster than scientists had feared.

A team from the University of Alaska Fairbanks said they were astounded by how quickly a succession of unusually hot summers had destabilised the upper layers of giant subterranean ice blocks that had been frozen solid for millennia.

“What we saw was amazing,” Vladimir Romanovsky, a professor of geophysics at the university, told Reuters. “It’s an indication that the climate is now warmer than at any time in the last 5,000 or more years.“

MF, I actually agree with the part that it was a poor prediction. Here’s another poor prediction. In 2001 the IPCC predicted that the annual mean Arctic sea ice extent wouldn’t drop below 10.5 km^2 until 2040 at the earliest. It actually happen in 2007 which is 33 years and 6x faster than predicted. So yeah, just like in most disciplines of science perfect predictions are often impossible, but that doesn’t mean these predictions are complete failures or “crap”. I mean at least they correctly predicted that the melt would be aggressive. Just because it was even more aggressive than officially stated in AR3 doesn’t mean that their prediction is somehow equally as bad as those who selectively ignore certain climate modulating agents and who predicted little or no melt. I’m just saying…

Some predictions are useful. For example, if I heat a piece of a particular type of carbon steel to a certain shade of red, and quench it a certain way, the hardness should be within a certain range – time after time. If it isn’t, something needs investigating.

A useless prediction is worse than no prediction at all, if any expenditure of time and effort that could have usefully been employed elsewhere is involved.

When you mention predictions, you might actually be referring to baseless assumptions. Certainly, there is no science involved. Nobody can describe the GHE, no testable hypotheses, no theory – no nothing. If it looks like crap, sounds like crap, and is less useful than great steaming pile of manure, then it probably is crap.

Give me something useful, that I can’t work out for myself, and I’ll be grateful.

Yes b. You are correct.
An imprecise prediction of a future catastrophe is incalculably valuable.
Especially as each year/month that goes by is consistent with it being true.
People like MF who refuse to consider current expert advice will have a difficult time avoiding liability when the time comes (assuming he lives that long).

“Science is belief in the ignorance of experts”, particularly self appointed “climate science” experts such as the undistinguished mathematician Gavin Schmidt, the fraudulent fake Nobel Laureate Michael Mann, the buffoonish Trenberth and his “missing heat”, and the rest of the bumbling incompetent “experts”.

Shiver and quake about future catastrophe all you like. Gnash your teeth and rend your garments if you wish. I can’t be bothered – the future is unknowable. I make my assumptions, and live with the consequences. So far, so good.

MF:”I make my assumptions, and live with the consequences. So far, so good.”
Even if it makes you look like a prize fool? Sorry, you cannot see that if all you do is blog here day and night.
It just goes to show that it is true that half the population are of below average intelligence – all part of the rich tapestry of life I suppose.

David Appell says:
June 21, 2019 at 7:58 PM
MF has no idea what Gavin Schmidts professional reputation is he is utterly unqualified to say.

“Schmidt has risen to NASA GISS Director, which says a lot.”

The greatest weakness of our system of civil service is at the top echelons where political influence brings about top level promotions. Below that much more integrity and skill exists. And getting promoted by James Hansen is hardly an endorsement of Schmidt’s science skills.

Fortunately political corruption does not run too deep as administrations come and go every 8 years and career oriented civil servants hang around a lot longer.

Dr Myki says:
June 18, 2019 at 5:10 PMPermafrost at outposts in the Canadian Arctic is thawing 70 years earlier than predicted, an expedition has discovered, in the latest sign that the global climate crisis is accelerating even faster than scientists had feared.

Instead of plagiarizing, be decent enough to give a citation to another’s words:

It says right in the article the study period was only through 2016. You know, the peak of the strongest el nino cycle of the past 40 years? Why are all these studies and reconstructed ice cover maps only going thru 2016? Why not run them through now as we start to dip our toe into the greatest grand solar minimum since at least the 1800s. (according to NASA) Areas drying now will get more dry. Areas flooding now will get more floods. Areas cooling now (like myself in the Midwest) will get colder. Areas like Alaska will probably get warmer.

My advice, you should start thinking about joining the blue team. The red team had their fun, but the new climate change to fear is cooling / flooding / crop loss. Everyone on this site has a HUGE advantage over the general public because we are actually talking about the data rather than just who we should believe. Once this issue goes main stream, the economy will fail, and it will be too late to prepare.

(Although late) here is the missing citation and explanation of the headline:
“The research team analyzed data gathered from 2003 to 2016 and published their findings last week in Geophysical Research Letters. The scientists recorded permafrost thawing depths that were not expected until average temperatures reached the level that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted in one of its moderate climate change models a level predicted for after 2090, according to LiveScience.”

These results come from the SABER instrument onboard NASA’s TIMED satellite. SABER monitors infrared emissions from carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitric oxide (NO), two substances that play a key role in the energy balance of air 100 to 300 kilometers above our planet’s surface. By measuring the infrared glow of these molecules, SABER can assess the thermal state of gas at the very top of the atmosphere–a layer researchers call “the thermosphere.”

Myki: because something is published in Nature, or any other journal, doesn’t mean that it’s the immutable truth, chiselled from granite and not open to question.
In the world of scientific work new ideas emerge, new technologies develop, and existing ideas and dogma are revised or challenged – it’s a fluid field of endeavour.
In my research years, which journal I was reading was of no consequence whatsoever – it was the content of the paper before me that mattered, and whether it was plausible, of interest, or potentially useful to me. Peer review has its flaws, and hopefully you’re aware of this.
You can’t hide forever behind ‘peer reviewed research.’ If someone raises a contradictory point, the question always is – does that person have a reasonable point to make, and one which should be given further thought?
Sooner or later, someone at a meeting will ask ‘would you care
to speculate?’ – there you are, the rabbit in the headlights, and you’re going to have to come up with your own view of affairs – and fast!
I’m always irritated by those who simply post links on websites such as this, and don’t supply arguments in their own words along with relevant references. This to me indicates that they don’t have a scientific background.

Saves you from having to produce the “no reasonable point” (which you can’t quite lay your hands on at the moment, I suppose).

How are you going finding a useful GHE description? Not so well? I don’t blame you for lurching off into paroxysms of deny, divert and confuse. Climate is the average of weather, no more, no less. Climate science is an oxymoron, unless you can show facts to the contrary.

Keep praying – maybe you can make the Earth hotter with your religious fervour! Four and a half billion years of sunlight doesn’t seem to have worked, eh?

C,
Of course peer review has its flaws.
But it is the accepted way of advancing good science.
Much like Churchill’s quote:
“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

That being said, nobody could stand by and allow this sort of nonsense to go without comment:
“Nature will publish computer generated gibberish on receipt of appropriate payment. Fake peer review is part of the service, obviously.”
Such pig ignorance is the hall mark of a seriously delusional personality.

mikey…”Of course peer review has its flaws.
But it is the accepted way of advancing good science”.

Peer review has nothing to do with the advancement of science and in many cases it interferes. It should be dropped since it has outgrown its usefulness. At one time, it served the purpose of restricting papers from laymen. Today it serves the paragigm-prone by blocking good science that does not fit a paradigm.

Gordon Robertson says:Peer review has nothing to do with the advancement of science and in many cases it interferes. It should be dropped since it has outgrown its usefulness. At one time, it served the purpose of restricting papers from laymen.

Not at all, Gordon — laymen could still read the peer reviewed journals if they wanted to.

So what’s your proposal for a better system?

Peer review doesn’t mean a paper is right, it means it is not obviously wrong, and adheres to basic scholarly standards in terms of layout and citation of prior work.

Almost all the typical denier claims are obviously wrong, and don’t utilize scholarly standards, either.

“Not at all, Gordon laymen could still read the peer reviewed journals if they wanted to.

So whats your proposal for a better system?”

Peer review works fine for academia.

What needs to be changed is a return toward an independent civil service. You know the service was invented and created to limit political corruption.

Unfortunately politics has tapped academia to fill decision making posts with the civil service largely relegated to a single seat on multi-seat panels of experts.

An academic scientist has no incentive for efficiency and challenging the advisability of a project WILL affect the funds dedicated to the institution for the project.

In the civil service part of your job rating is efficiency. Its fine to draw on academia for supervised work where the civil service becomes the institutions “efficiency rater” and make the ultimate decision without political influence as to the appropriateness of the science produced.

Either that or create a completely independent professionalized institution and licensing similar to the CPA model to review the science. Magazine editors would hardly qualify since they make a lot of money on sensationalized articles, or are advocating explicitly for the authors as do the various science societies.

Yep. Exactly. Peer review doesn’t stop after a paper is published. In fact, the bulk of the peer review process happens after publication when the entire world gets to review it. You are not excluded in anyway. That’s the great thing about science. Knowledge is available to anyone who seeks it.

One wonders if the data homogenization process used to fill in historically unmeasured temperature grid locations in the Arctic, is able to faithfully reflect what we observe (thanks to satellite measurements) in times of solar minima where it appears that stratospheric intrusions happen at much lower latitudes, causing unusually cool temperatures but at high latitudes in the Arctic temperatures may even be less cold. I doubt any thought was given to the effects of solar activity at all.

AlanF
“I doubt any thought was given to the effects of solar activity at all.”
Winters will force us to think about the impact of solar activity on the waves of severe frost in medium geographical latitudes.

I agree TSI doesnt change much. I am talking about the changes in magnetic fields and particle fluxes associated with solar minima. These influence the polar circulation, ozone, and cause weather patterns to change quite drastically…
Id defer to Ren here, in understanding the mechanisms. But certainly far stronger effects than just TSI.

Meh…I don’t know. I seemed like CERN put a nail in the GCR coffin a few years back. One surprising (to me anyway) result from their CLOUD experiment was that volatile organic compounds (like which is emitted by trees) actually could be modulating cloud nucleation processes.

Good point about a hypothetical solar minimum being temporary. Even if it does happen and it suppresses the warning by 0.2C the effect will be short lived. That in no way changes the equilibrium climate response of GHGs.

MF, the atmospheric state cannot be predicted with skill beyond 15 days or so, but that is different than predicting averages over large spatial and temporal domains which has been shown to be skillful.

“MF, the atmospheric state cannot be predicted with skill beyond 15 days or so, but that is different than predicting averages over large spatial and temporal domains which has been shown to be skillful.

What are you blathering about? What averages do you claim can be skilfully predicted?

Certainly none that relate to the atmosphere. Maybe you are talking about shoe sizes? In Uzbekistan?

The IPCC stated that prediction of future climate states are not predictable. What averages do you claim can be predicted with more skill than I could demonstrate? Care to bet?

Try coming up with a useful prediction – not an assumption based on the past, any fool can do that. Have fun.

Mg II index data
The Mg II data are derived from GOME (1995-2011), SCIAMACHY (2002-2012), GOME-2A (2007-present), and GOME-2B (2012-present). All three data sets as well as the Bremen Mg II composite data are available (see links below). In late years the GOME solar irradiance has degraded to about 20% of its value near 280 nm in 1995, so that the GOME data have become noisier.http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de/gome/solar/mgii_composite_2.png

“MehI dont know. I seemed like CERN put a nail in the GCR coffin a few years back.”

Thats incorrect. CERN apparently was able to show there hasn’t been a big trend in GCRs over the past 50 years that could account for recent warming alone. However, feedbacks can take a thousand years or more as glaciers melt and expand and oceans warm and cool. The challenge is to figure out the whole suite of effects and what they contribute both to ancient solar grand minimums, modern grand solar maximums, ocean current oscillations, greenhouse gases, GCRs, UHI (UHI affect on local thermometers and their unreal representation in the climate record).

Published 2019 May 3 2019. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
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Abstract
While the Earth and Moon are generally similar in composition, a notable difference between the two is the apparent depletion in moderately volatile elements in lunar samples. This is often attributed to the formation process of the Moon, and it demonstrates the importance of these elements as evolutionary tracers. Here we show that paleo space weather may have driven the loss of a significant portion of moderate volatiles, such as sodium and potassium, from the surface of the Moon. The remaining sodium and potassium in the regolith is dependent on the primordial rotation state of the Sun. Notably, given the joint constraints shown in the observed degree of depletion of sodium and potassium in lunar samples and the evolution of activity of solar analogs over time, the Sun is highly likely to have been a slow rotator. Because the young Sun’s activity was important in affecting the evolution of planetary surfaces, atmospheres, and habitability in the early Solar System, this is an important constraint on the solar activity environment at that time. Finally, as solar activity was strongest in the first billion years of the Solar System, when the Moon was most heavily bombarded by impactors, evolution of the Sun’s activity may also be recorded in lunar crust and would be an important well-preserved and relatively accessible record of past Solar System processes.https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ab18fb/meta

The same thing that happens to the IR from ice when it hits anything hotter.

Try making your tea hotter by getting it to absorb IR energy from ice, and let me know how you get on. Or you could believe the dimwitted likes of Gavin Schmidt (fake climate scientist) or Michael Mann (fake Noble Laureate).

The h20 vapour has to release its latent heat to something in order to crystalize…

Perhaps co2 begins to deposit on the micrometeors, then along comes h20 which releases its latent heat to the co2, vaporising it and growing h2o ice deposits… The co2 cools via radiation until it once again deposits.. Rinse cycle and repeat…

It only occurs when temp and pressure are at the appropriate critical point for its sublimation… And increasing co2 concentration makes for more clouds and faster propagation….

“CO2 is impervious to solar radiation.” There you go – you have answered your own gotcha, haven’t you?

Now, bananas absorb infrared radiation, and oranges emit it. Lead is impervious to solar radiation, just as your brain is impervious to the fact that the GHE is a non-existent example of pseudoscientific wishful thinking.

Do you think Gavin Schmidt is less intelligent than Michael Mann, or is Michael Mann actually more stupid and ignorant than Gavin Schmidt? Ah, as you aver on your blog, you can never ask too many questions, can you?

Folks are you watching the corn futures? We have just rallied by 25% in a little over a month and are at multi-year highs. Thank God we have wheat still apparently, and lots of it.

The crop losses have NOTHING to due with the arctic temperature as we’ve seen temperatures FALL in the last 3 years AS Co2 increases, and AS sea level in New York drops by 200mm in just 9 years. I don’t believe the main stream about the heat content of the ocean. I just can’t.

This cycle occurs on the 2.2 year time frame, 3.6 year time frame, 11 year time frame. The flooding we are seeing is perfectly natural for this part of the 11 year cycle where the harmonics are ending and we are about to head to la nina condition. It is however amplified by the fact that the 2016 El Nino was especially strong, and we are in an especially weak solar cycle. If it’s true that we are going to have a very weak solar cycle, I’m very unsure what this will do to this natural cycle we have enjoyed our entire life going forward. The climate is shifting people. This is not something that will happen by 2100. It is happening right now.

If CO2 were contributing to sea level rise, you would not have linear data. You would see faster and faster sea rise. Instead, we are seeing sea levels go down more than 200mm in New York over just 9 years. The North American continent is dynamic… northern Canada is rising fast as the weight from the melted glaciers has caused rebound. This is dropping the gulf coast in the same way a person getting out of a row boat causes the other passenger to sink. You have to measure sea level at the axis of rotation of the continent. I don’t claim to understand to understand all the calculations that went into the heat content of the oceans, but I do understand what the data measurements are saying, and they are saying that the heat content while rising SEEMED natural, and we are in high danger of reversing that linear trend as the sun goes to sleep. I wonder sometimes who summed all the sea level data across the globe and posted it to Nasa. Can I even trust that? How do I know they are capturing a fair amount of data from places that are rising (and are typically pretty far north or south.) Their temperature data doesn’t seem to match UAH, RSS, or anything else for that matter. RSS is a joke. It doesn’t even include 70-90 deg south, which has had the most cooling on the globe. They are only weighting the south pole once instead of 3 times. (60-70) Anyways, why should I be that concerned when the upper atmosphere is cooling rapidly since like forever. That will cause the total TSI for the globe to fall. Earth seems to have some pretty good feed back cycles keeping our climate comfy without much volatility. The earth’s climate sensitivity is LOW. CO2 is NOT causing the flooding. El nino + cold arctic / Antarctic is doing that. You need sharp temperature gradients for it to rain like this.

Of course it is a scam. Even Dr Spencer is in on it by publishing fake satellite data that shows warming trends!
Of course all the thousands of climate scientists are in it for the money. We are now all so rich and all have secure jobs for life ! None of us ever breaks ranks or divulges the conspiracy.
Of course, the glaciers are not melting. Of course the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extents are not diminishing. Of course sea levels are not rising. Thats just us faking all the old photographic evidence and satellite imagery. We doctor all the data (thats why we have our titles!).
You have obviously discovered the almighty truth! Well done!
Please keep it under your hat.

“Of course it is a scam.” – global warming due to some miraculous properties of CO2 which have never been confirmed by experiment, that is. More a delusion, but scam is as good a word as any. Taking money for attempting to predict the future on the basis of a pseudoscientific belief fits the definition of scam, I suppose.

The rest of your nonsense including an “us” which doesn’t actually exist, plus a witless attempt to browbeat by mentioning Dr Spencer, are signs of desperation.

If you could actually describe your mythical GHE, you might convince a few people other than GHE true believers.

MF: You hit the nail right on the proverbial head when you say ‘global warming due to some miraculous properties of CO2 which have never been confirmed by experiment.’
Exactly.
Where is the repeatable experiment which demonstrates conclusively in any laboratory around the world how much heating incremental increases of 1ppm of CO2 cause in an artificial atmosphere, with variable concentrations of water vapour?
The IPCC tell us that this can’t be done, but other scientific disciplines have progressed – for example the physicists with their particle accelerators, the biologists their DNA sequencing and cloning technology, even carbon fibre bicycle frames are now available because of advances in technology.
Why, then, can the climate scientists not devise an experiment to show this?
If they have, and anyone out there can supply a reference, please
supply it.
As an aside, the pH of rainwater measured in areas away from population centres is about 5.3, attributable to dissolved CO2.
I wonder how much CO2 is left in the air after a rainstorm, and also whether there is some CO2-water vapour interaction affecting IR absorbance/release in the atmosphere. It seems to me that little work has been done on the atmospheric kinetics of CO2 – or has it?
Comments and insights welcomed!

I do find the thermopile and infrared spectroscopy experiments since the 1800’s and the molecular physics and quantum mechanical experiments since the early 1900’s adequate, but the experiment that’s most convincing to me is the 500 million years of data we have from the paleoclimate record and the 100+ years of data we have from the instrumental record. I can’t think of a better experimental apparatus than the Earth itself.

“I do find the thermopile and infrared spectroscopy experiments since the 1800s and the molecular physics and quantum mechanical experiments since the early 1900s adequate, . . .”

Oooooh! Sciency, and completely meaningless. You cant even usefully describe the GHE, and using big words like “molecular” and “experiments” won’t help to convince anybody that you actually understand what you are talking about.

You also wrote –

“I cant think of a better experimental apparatus than the Earth itself.”

And of course, notwithstanding your witless cherry picking attempt, over the longest period available, facts show the earth has cooled. The surface is no longer molten.

Deny, divert, and confuse all you like. No GHE. No CO2 heating properties. So sad, too bad.

“MF,
Actually the facts show that Earth has gone through many warming and cooling periods. The surface is no longer one big snowball.”, which, as usual, is completely irrelevant to what I wrote.

Over four and a half billion years, the Earth has demonstrably cooled. No weasel words, no evasions, just a simple and plain fact.

You imply, in the usual evasive pseudoscientific fashion, that the Earth’s surface was completely frozen (“one big snowball”) on more than one occasion. Of course, this is physically impossible, so you will no doubt try to say you really meant to say something else.

Too late. You can’t produce a mechanism which would allow the Earth’s surface to be completely frozen, can you? You are just trying to wriggle out of admitting that I am right, and the “tens of thousands” (or whatever it is) of “climate scientists” are delusional nutters.

Might I be so free to propose an experiment, perhaps with some modificiations as seen fit by the professionals. In fact, unless everyone is a complete idiot, I am free to suppose that such experiment has been done.

One takes several transparent plastic boxes and fills them with different kinds of atmosphere(water wapour, co2 percentage)and installs a thermometer inside. Puts them outside and measures.

if the proposed experiment had not been done, it is a certain science paper, or nature which ever you prefere, and I would appreciate a coauthorship.

The experiment will give us not only the differences in achieved temparatures, but will give us the “greenshouse effect” per gas contained, and the dynamics of heat dissipation during the night. I would propose a standard 100 ppm 200 ppm 400 ppm 1000 ppm series times 0, 1 and 4% vapour.
so 16 boxes. I do not know at which percentage of wapour condensation becomes a problem. Let us say to be perfect we do this experiment in different ranfge of temperatures, climates, or seasons if you prefer.

It is however difficult for me to believe this had not been done and I would appreciate a link to this genius articel.

mikey…”Even Dr Spencer is in on it by publishing fake satellite data that shows warming trends!”

There’s a big difference between what Roy presents and the way you climate alarmist buffoons interpret it.

UAH has claimed a 0.13C/decade warming over 4 decades. If that was true warming, the UAH average would be 0.52C above the baseline whereas it has been a flat trend of about 0.2C for the better part of 20 years.

UAH has obviously not claimed an overall warming of 0.52C over 40 years, in fact, they have gone to lengths to point out there has been little or no true warming, depending on locale.

How can that be?

For one, the first 18 years of the record was a RE-WARMING from cooling. For another, the 18 years from 1998 – 2015 showed no warming trend. Since 1979, there has been only about 0.2C true warming ‘ON AVERAGE’.

Fir another, unlike the ravings of you eco-weenies, neither Roy nor John Christy of UAH have claimed what percent of the warming is due to anthropogenic gases. Neither of them think there will be any catastrophic effects.

What a contortion!
It is warming – no, it is’nt warming – yes it is, but not due to anthropogenic gases – hang on, it is warming on average, but that must de classified as “true warming”, as opposed to (maybe) untrue warming ?- whatever that is. ……..hilarious!

Gordo continues to display his lack of understanding of data analysis when he writes:

UAH has claimed a 0.13C/decade warming over 4 decades. If that was true warming, the UAH average would be 0.52C above the baseline whereas it has been a flat trend of about 0.2C for the better part of 20 years.

The “base line” is defined by subtracting the average over the period 1981 thru 2010. A trend line in the data with a slope of 0.13 K/decade would begin at -0.26 K and end at +0.26 K, not 0.52 K which Gordo thinks should be the result, thus the recent UAH values are consistent with the stated trend. Of course, Gordo repeats the usual denialist cherry picking, selecting a period of 1998 thru 2015, which begins with a strong El Nino and leaves out the next big El Nino of 2016. By using that period to calculate a trend, the result intentionally understates the long term change. Either Gordo is totally ignorant or he is intent on continuing the spread the usual disinformation from the denialist camp.

“MF, you never quote what comes *after* the IPCCs take on chaos:”, as follows –

“The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”

DA finally gets something right!

As DA points out, what comes after is the usual IPCC pseudoscientific climate cult nonsense –

“Rather the focus must be upon the prediction of the probability distribution of the systems future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions.

What a pack of dissembling fools! After being forced to acknowledge the fact that future climate states are unpredictable, the plea for continued funding is cloaked in pseudoscientific malarkey, implying that future climate states are, indeed, usefully predictable!

The probability distribution of a fair coin is 50-50. Unfortunately, this well known probability is completely useless for predicting the next fall of the coin! Outcomes of chaotic systems are completely unpredictable. A guess about a future outcome is just a guess.

A naive persistence forecast which can be carried out by a 12 year old child is just as useful as the most educated guess. From one US university course –

. . .actually one of the most useful roles of the persistence forecast is predicting long range weather conditions or making climate forecasts . . .”

Yet, I can still predict with 100% certainty that summer next year will be warmer than winter, that tonight will be colder than today.
I can also predict with some certainty that the stock market index will be higher in 10years time than it is today. And I can provide a probability distribution for future values. Nothing remarkable about how this can be done.
Same way I can provide a probability distribution for global average temperatures at 2100. Again, nothing particularly remarkable about how this is done.
A 12yo child could understand what is going on, why can’t old deniers appreciate this?

You are one of the stupid people who confuse prediction with assumption, for starters, and cannot do it any better than a 12 year old, in any case.

A pea brained migratory bird assumes that winter is colder than summer, and that night follows day. I hope you are smarter than a pea brained bird, but maybe you aren’t.

Your stock market “prediction” is wishful thinking, as every investor who has lost money making the same silly assumption has found. You are probably also unaware that indices such as the Dow-Jones discard poor performers to ensure that the index rises,. I wonder why? So that people such as yourself are silly enough to believe that they can peer into the future?

You claim to be able to provide a probability distribution for future values – as does every horse race handicapper. The results speak for themselves.

A 12 year child can make the same assumptions as you. Why should anybody believe your witless pseudoscientific assertions?

You don’t even know what the “global average temperature” is right now, do you? Make a guess – who could prove you wrong?

it’s not easy to see a point which exists only in the rich fantasy you inhabit.

If your point is that you can predict future climate states, you are quite deranged. Even the IPCC states it is impossible. If you are talking about something as unmeasurable as a supposed global average temperature, or similar pseudoscientific nonsense, you are dreaming.

You don’t even know what the current value of your mythical temperature is, do you?

Carry on pretending you are actually connected to reality, rather than occupying a fantasy world.

Let me spell it out for you so that even a 12yo can understand.
It is possible and not difficult to make a long-term prediction of the probability distribution for:
stock prices
the price of wheat
housing prices
death rates
birth rates
global average temperatures
Smart people/businesses do this all the time.
Your comments are therefore pure denialist clap-trap.

Unfortunately, any fool can claim that it is easy to predict the future by examining the past, and many do.

Pseudoscientists of the climatological variety do it with monotonous regularity. So far, nothing of practical use has ever been shown to result from their crystal ball gazing.

You don’t even know what the present “global average temperature” is. Not surprising, of course – you can’t even define the “global average temperature” in any useful scientific way.

Keep predicting – you might even find someone more stupid and ignorant than yourself to pay for your “predictions”! Maybe you could use your ability to predict stock prices to amass a vast fortune? No? You are far too modest. How hard can it be?

You dont even know what the present global average temperature is. Not surprising, of course you cant even define the global average temperature in any useful scientific way.

Funny thing, Dr. Spencer’s data which he posts every month is supposed to be a “global average” temperature. He and others which provide similar data are calculating that “average” in a logically consistent manor which is easy to define. That process often represents only one measurement within a 2.5 x 2.5 degree grid block at a fixed time each day, depending upon which satellite is selected for the mix. One satellite may alternate measurements for a location, with data from the sunlight side one day and from the night side the next. And, with version 6, UAH combines measurements from different layers which are acquired on different days to create their average monthly gridded data set.

So, Mikey, where’s your detailed critique of Dr. Spencer’s monthly results? Aren’t you being just another hypocrite, complaining about one method used to analyze some data, while tacitly agreeing with another batch of data produced with similar methodological characteristics?

I assume you are attempting an oblique appeal to authority, because I pointed out you cannot even define the global average temperature in any meaningful way.

Have a look at what Dr Spencer presents, what it represents, the extent of the coverage, the underlying assumptions, and all the rest. You still cannot define the “global average temperature” in any meaningful way, can you?

Just more meaningless attempts to deny, divert, and confuse. Dr Spencer appears to be a scientist collecting data, rather than a pseudoscientist promoting nonsense. Tycho Brahe spent a long time collecting data, Johannes Kepler examined the data, and reluctantly changed his views on planetary movements, leading to Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion. And so to Newton’s Laws of Motion.

Who knows what Dr Spencer’s data might lead to?

Why would I criticise Dr Spencer’s results? Just because you think I should, for some reason that positively eludes me?

You are confused. Maybe you believe CO2 makes things hotter. I don’t. No GHE. The concept is so ridiculous that nobody can even properly describe such a thing!

Temperature measuring devices respond to heat. That’s what they are designed to do. CO2 provides no heat.

Have a look at what Dr Spencer presents, what it represents, the extent of the coverage, the underlying assumptions, and all the rest. You still cannot define the global average temperature in any meaningful way, can you?
…
Why would I criticise Dr Spencers results? Just because you think I should, for some reason that positively eludes me?

Mikey doesn’t “criticise” any work, he just spouts empty rhetoric and pointless questions without any substance in support. For example, Spencer and Christy present a product which they claim to be monthly global and regional averages of atmospheric “temperature”, which are of dubious value as I see it. Yet, Mikey refuses to apply the same sort of critical analysis to UAH which he claims invalidates all the other measures of historical climate change. He also apparently refuses to consider that there are other groups which also provide analysis of the MSU/AMSU data, the results of which indicate a greater rate of warming than that from UAH.

I’ve studied the work from UAH for many years, publishing results back in 2003 and again in 2017, both after peer review, for what it’s worth. Along the way, I’ve replicated part of the process used by another group and I’ve attempted to understand the latest UAH processing for their version 6 products.

Here’s a quick look at their work, AIUI. For the Aqua satellite with an orbit period of 98.8 minutes, 14.58 orbits are completed each 24 hours resulting in 29.15 crossings of the Equator. Dividing the 360 degree longitude into a 2.5 degree grid results in 144 “blocks”, thus to completely fill those blocks would require almost 5 days, half of which are from day side and half from the night side crossings. However, after about 80 orbits, the geometry results in overpasses over previously filled blocks, so it’s likely that a monthly average might be the result of binning fewer than the 6 data values which one might expect from the above calculation. As the UAH processing creates a stacked grid corresponding to each scan position, there’s a similar situation spread through out the resulting stack of data. And, the data for the higher elevations in the stack are acquired at different dates from those below. Yet, UAH would have us believe that it’s appropriate to combine these data for each grid block in the stack to represent a valid monthly average “temperature” profile for that grid block, as they fit a curve to that stack of values to calculate a single value for each location which they call “LT” or “MT”, etc.

So, Mikey, do you really want to bet the farm on that latest work from UAH? Sorry, I don’t think that’s a good idea for the future residents of planet Earth. A scientist must be critical of all the information available, weighing both the good with the bad, in order to find the truth.

I can also predict with some certainty that the stock market index will be higher in 10years time than it is today. And I can provide a probability distribution for future values. Nothing remarkable about how this can be done.

Yeah, let’s see you provide a probablity distribution for stock futures in 10 years.

Gee – another 12yo.
Provide me with the long-term historical record (of any index) and I will give you a probability distribution.

It will tell you that the most likely outcome will be for an increase in stock prices in 10 years time, but it will also give the probability that they could actually decrease. While interesting, dont expect to be able to make much money out of it.

“Provide me with the long-term historical record (of any index) and I will give you a probability distribution.”

Exactly. It is called a naive persistence forecast – it can be performed by any reasonable 12 year old.

Amazingly, many intelligent people believe that the future can be predicted by intense examination of the past. Complete nonsense, of course, but humans seem to have a need to believe that the future can be seen – usually by a seer, shaman, augur, oracle, or these days a “climate scientist’.

Unfortunately, without even a useful description the fabled GHE, “climate science” is an oxymoron. Pseudoscientific fakes and frauds abound – cross their palms with silver, and you will be told how to avoid approaching doom. Fear of an uncertain future is the pseudoscientist’s stock in trade.

And, FYI, the predictions are now being taken so seriously that big business, big government and big deniers are quaking in their boots:
“More than 1,000 climate-change-related lawsuits are winding through courts around the world, according to a database compiled by the Sabin Centre for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in New York.

The flurry of cases follows a groundbreaking decision in the Netherlands in 2015, in which the government was found to be disregarding its constitutional duty to protect citizens from climate change. The decision forced the Dutch government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 25 per cent compared to 1990 levels.”https://www.cbc.ca/news/the-national-climate-change-courts-1.5182876

If it is “not quite”, then what is it? Your evasive nonsense is just that. The usual sort of climatological redefinition – you cannot bring yourself to come out and disagree, so you have to resort to stupidities such as “not quite”.

It either is naive persistence forecasting (easily done by a 12 year old), or it is not.

Just like your garbage about –

“There is a long-term trend to be added in -based on the results of climate model predictions.
These have been pretty good to date.”

Just more using the past to predict the future, with a dose of computer generated nonsense thrown in for good measure! What does “pretty good” mean? Useful? Completely pointless?

Are you sure you don’t mean “not quite pretty good”, perhaps?

Keep delving into the past. It won’t predict the future better than a 12 year old. Still no GHE. CO2 heats nothing. You are still stupid and ignorant.

“And, FYI, the predictions are now being taken so seriously that big business, big government and big deniers are quaking in their boots:”

Oooooh! I’m so scared! It’s a good thing, then, that the IPCC stated that future climate states are not predictable.

That is likely to be used by defence lawyers, don’t you think? It might explain why case after case has been thrown out in the US. Maybe you could name a few people who are quaking in their boots due to the climate constantly changing, as it has for four and half billion years?

Oh dear, even the GHE true believers admitted predicting a chaotic system was impossible. That’s why they use weasel words like “probability distribution”, “scenarios”, and so on.

I’ll quake in my boots from laughter, if you like. Sue me if you wish.

“Poor ignorant fellow.
Cannot understand how a simple probability distribution can be generated for predictive purposes.”

More sciencey nonsense.

Here’s part of an answer to a question “What is a probability distribution” authored by NIST – US Dept of Commerce.

“Discrete probability functions are referred to as probability mass functions and continuous probability functions are referred to as probability density functions. The term probability functions covers both discrete and continuous distributions.”

A simple probability distribution does not cover the outcomes of a chaotic system, by definition. Nor does any type of probability distribution. Certainly, up until a few years ago, Gavin Schmidt told me he had seen nothing to convince him that the atmosphere acted in a chaotic fashion. More fool him.

You are also a fool – even denying the statement by the IPCC that it is not possible to predict future climate states.

Carry on with the vague pseudoscientific assertions. Still no GHE. CO2 has no heating properties, and you still can’t usefully predict the outcome of the next toss of a coin, let alone anything more complex!

“A simple probability distribution does not cover the outcomes of a chaotic system, by definition. Nor does any type of probability distribution.”
Poor ignorant fool.
Did you know that, in the long term, the orbits of the planets are actually chaotic. Yet we can predict with certainty their positions over the next few years. How else do space probes work?
The weather is chaotic, yet I can accurately predict what it will be like tomorrow.
The stock market is chaotic, yet I can tell you that next week’s DJI will be 26726 plus or minus 500.
Have a look athttps://twitter.com/ClimateOfGavin
to see how good the global average temperature predictions have been.
Wait, sorry, you cant stand Gavin, so you will have to remain in the dark.

“Did you know that, in the long term, the orbits of the planets are actually chaotic. Yet we can predict with certainty their positions over the next few years. How else do space probes work?”

Yes, and what’s more I know the difference between the Lyapunov times for the atmosphere and planetary orbits, which you either don’t, or are being purposely deceptive. What is your point? Chaotic systems are not necessarily equal in time scale.

Your blathering about your predictive skills is pointless, as you are unable to provide any reason for believing you can demonstrate any greater level of skill than that of a 12 year old performing a naive persistence forecast.

Maybe you are more stupid and ignorant than a reasonably competent 12 year old? Do you really consider it a stroke of predictive genius to assume the Sun will rise tomorrow? A 12 year old child might well come to the same conclusion!

As to Gavin Schmidt, he appoints himself to be a “climate scientist” in the link you provided. He seems to have a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics, and a PhD in mathematics. Unfortunately, mathematics is not science. Gavin Schmidt is no more a scientist of any type than Michael Mann is a Nobel Laureate. Your worship might be misplaced, but you may slavishly adore whomever you wish. Be my guest.

Maybe you could address something I wrote, rather than any number of things which I didn’t! Your call.

You now seem to agree that it is possible to make probabilistic predictions about chaotic systems.
Whether they are skilful or not depends on your definition of skill.
Unless you can address something I said that is demonstrably wrong, your comments are again nothing more than meaningless drivel from an ignorant old fool.
Have a nice day.

“You now seem to agree that it is possible to make probabilistic predictions about chaotic systems.”

This is demonstrably wrong – you claimed (albeit in a slimy, implied fashion) that I agreed with something which I did not. Instead of making stuff up, maybe you could just ask – but you probably realise that my answer might not be to your liking.

Do you really want to appear even more stupid than you are?

Dragging stuff out of your fantasy world, and pretending it is true, will get you nowhere. You haven’t the faintest idea about what it is you are blathering about. You are unable to demonstrate that there is any utility at all in your “probabilistic predictions”! A simple coin toss has a probability of 50% heads or tails. What good does it do you? Now try a chaotic system.

Some fools even think that if a coin has shown, say, 20 heads in a row, then the next throw is more likely to be a tail than a head! Are you such a fool? The coin has no memory of prior tosses at all. You can’t even usefully predict the outcome of something as simple as coin toss!

Bad luck for you if you believe otherwise. How have your stock market predictions turned out for you? Are you fabulously wealthy yet? No? Have some confidence in your own abilities, laddie! No guts, no glory! I suspect that you are all mouth and no trousers, as they say, but feel free to prove me wrong.

You sound very frustrated at not being able to appreciate the concepts of probability, chaos, predictions, skill and confidence.
Maybe if you had studied beyond high school …
Anyway, continue having a nice day.
I hear tomorrow will be as nice as today!

Excelent answer. All Dooms belivers are good in belif but extreemly poor in the lows of nature. Political consensus has nothing to do with sience, but of course good for funding from politicians that can put tax on people and companies and also claim they saved the Earth if temperature can be held the scary increase of 1.5 deg C rise. Time for them to put forward some hard fact and no computer simulations. Bullshit in gives bullshit out. Time will tell 😊

How do we address the fact that the entire sat data record is only from 1978 – present and when we calculate the man made trend, it does not include the naturally reoccurring cycle we see in the base noaa data on a higher time frame? For instance, from 1940-1980, substantial cooling took place, and yet the overall temperature departure trends for all these data sets, not just UAH ignore the higher time frame cycle? In my opinion, the 2016 data point was the top of this longer term cycle (of maybe 40 years). I’m basing that on El Nino / global temperature data pairs, and mostly North America temperature departures / observed precipitation over the past year pointing towards a higher time frame cycle location change.

Have you guys checked the total # of hot days for your area? The number of days over 80 deg F, number of days of 90 deg F has been falling for decades. It means the warming that we are getting has all been coming at night. Was that part of the AGW model?

Should we be worried about how cold the upper atmosphere is getting? For me… the farther the upper atmosphere and the lower troposphere diverge, the harder it will be for additional Co2 to have any effect at all. It’s just a basic heat transfer principle. Am I wrong? Look at TTS – basically, it is flat lined over the warming period. Considering we were in the WARMING part of the 40 year natural cycle, I would have expected that to increase more.

If the warming is caused by a cycle then we know the cycle has to be external to the climate system since the entire geosphere is warming. I mean like everything…hydrosphere, lithosphere, cryosphere, atmosphere, etc. The heat isn’t just moving around from one reservoir to another like what an internal cycle would do. So what natural phenomenon do you think explains the 10e21 joules of energy being accumulated every year?

And note that 2 of 3 lines of evidence, which is a small subset of that which is available, have no connection to Trenberth at all. So if you want to reject Cheng et al. because Trenberth is listed as a contributor then you’re going to have to accept that the energy imbalance is even higher because Johnson et al. was 0.7 W/m^2 and Resplandy et al. was 0.8 W/m^2 while Cheng et al. was “only” 0.6 W/m^2.

Of course evidence of warming and an energy imbalance is not necessarily evidence for a cause. There are different lines of evidence for the cause. Though the way in which the energy imbalance occurs does eliminate some causes.

Thank you Ken, I’ll take a look at that. I just posted a link to Zharkova’s work in a new thread. You may want to check that out.

As for the natural cycle deniers of the group, within 2 years the fraud will be exposed and the models will be adjusted to make the SUN the main forcer of the climate. It is amazing to me that it was ever removed as the main forcer honestly, but hey, that’s where we are at.

Yet it never gets cooler…. And it still won’t — ocean heat content will continue to rise year after year, and next decade’s average surface temperature will be warmer than this decade’s, as has been happening since the 1970s.

Salvatore said…”I am still convinced AGW is scam and global cooling is coming it is when not if.”

People have been saying this for decades and yet during this period the Earth keeps accumulating energy at a rate of 1e22 joules/year. At what point do you concede that the cooling isn’t going too materialize?

“People have been saying this for decades and yet during this period the Earth keeps accumulating energy at a rate of 1e22 joules/year. At what point do you concede that the cooling isnt going too materialize?”

Well I am not sure. But if you look at the evidence in an unbiased way, say ice cores, maybe another 10,000 to 15,000 years would be a good time to consider that.

And yes, the sun does power El nino which causes the year to year variations in the hot / cold, wet / dry cycles. So quit with the 97% of scientists agree crap. It’s not true and you know it. Let’s all do humanity justice and focus on the data and trying to calculate the coefficients of each climate forcer, natural, or man made.

Someone needs to take on the IPCC, NASA, NOAA, and throw their own base data back in their faces proving the fraud in the adjustments. More than likely, the fraud starts way at the top due to political motivations. I have no other explanation for it. I don’t blame people using the adjusted data per say.

“closely linked to an increase of solar irradiance and terrestrial temperature in the past two centuries. This trend is anticipated to continue in the next six centuries that can lead to a further natural increase of the terrestrial temperature by more than 2.5 C by 2600.”

That is a warming rate of 0.04C/decade.

Dr Spencer’s data indicate a warming rate of 0.13 C/decade.

If Zharkova’s hypothesis is correct, it account s for 30% of the observed warming.

Dr. Spencer’s data covers 30 years. Can’t really compare that to the 600 year average that would include multiple 30 year periods of high rate of temperature increases followed by high rate of temperature decreases caused by natural cycles. Though the overall trend for the entire 600 year period would be 0.04C/decade. This is probably due to the planetary cycle and my understanding is that in about 10k years, this will shift to a long term cooling trend. Of course that would still have 30 year periods of temperature increases followed by 30 year periods of decreases, but the overall trend would be negative.

Not to imply a 30 year cycle, just that the satellite data is about 30 years long.

Not sure what part of “Not to imply a 30 year cycle, …” you don’t understand. I did not pick any particular cycles, just know they exist.

I was answering the question about why 0.04C/decade over 600 years is not comparable to 0.13C/decade over 30 years. Unless you believe their are no cycles observable in a 600 year period. The probability of having a significant 30 year period of warming is most likely slightly higher than a 30 year period of cooling occurring (given Zharkova et al 2019 0.04C/decade). Roy’s data showing 0.13/C warming is most likely 100% natural based on the latest research on Cycles.

However, if you are looking for information about cycles then these links were offered above. The video is very informative and does show how overlaying these natural cycles you will get these warming trends as depicted in Roy’s data set. I only had a chance to skim the Zharkova paper, but it looks like it confirming the video.

The slope for the 1980-2019 period is only covering part of a smaller period cycle than what Zharkova is predicting. You have to take the data from the 1940 top to the 2016 top to get a true linear slope. Or you could take the slope from the late 1800s to say 1980. The cooling that occurred from 1940-1980 was in deed substantial, and the folks at Nasa that adjusted that cooling period out of the public data should be ashamed of themselves. The historical record indicates that the glaciers were shrinking prior to 1940, than they started to grow again. In the 1970s, scientists were actually worried about an ice age. Looking thru the base NOAA data for individual locations everywhere, you can indeed see the cooling cycle that took place. Then you capped the cycle off with major volcanic eruptions in the early 80 with a clear warming effect in the stratosphere and cooling for the troposphere which was captured by the sat record. In other words, the linear slope from 1980-2016 is not going to be useful going forward for much… other than for proxy data of what might happen when we come out of the next multi-decadal solar min 35 years from now.

You can make a weak case for a 60 year cycle from the GISS data. You can see rapid warming from 1910 to 1940, then a hiatus from 1940 to 1970. The next cycle should show rapid warming from 1970 to 2000 and a hiatus until the present.

This would be what you would expect if you had a 60 year cycle superimposed on a long term warming trend.

In practice we have seen rapid warming since 2010, when a 60 year cycle would predict an ongoing hiatus.

A hiatus? lol We had REAL cooling from 1940-1980. Enough to make the experts at the time worried about an ice age. So you actually agree we need to measure peak to peak to get the slope. So the 1940-2016 data roughly. It’s more of an 80 year period with warming / cooling getting approximately 40 years each. So basically, we are just now finishing the warming cycle as of 3 years ago.

Entropic man… it is also possible we have a 65 year period cycle superimposed on top of a 200 year cycle. That would also make sense as a 3:1 harmonic. This allows for the individual cooling / warming periods to vary as the summation of the various period forcers create different results.

This is super interesting. Zharkova claims three very interesting aspects of solar cycles. First, they may be modulated by the Sun’s oscillations about its barycenter. Second, it is currently in the up phase of a super grand cycle that will peak in 2600 causing an additional 2.5C warming. Third, Zharkova holds firm to earlier predictions that next grand minimum will begin around cycles 26 or 27.

By the way…Zharkova uses a technique called principal component analysis to make these predictions. What is everyone’s thoughts on this technique?

My understanding is that the GSM begins now with cycle 25 forecasted to be very small. Note NASA has already agreed with this prediction. What is interesting about all of this is that neither the AGW or the “deniers” were completely wrong. We are in fact warming, but the main forcer is the sun. I had no idea that the sun had this type of cycle. I only knew about the 400 year cycle. So you have grand solar minimum 400 year cycle, but you also have SUPER grand solar mins / max with 2600 being the peak. I saw that there is another grand solar minimum in there. So in the end, we will need to worry about sea level rise and the arctic melting, but it won’t be our fault. That said, for the rest of my life, I have to deal with the cold. Just my luck.

Based on the linear sea level rise of 3.3mm per year and assuming that trend IS NOT interrupted by the 400 year GSM cycle, by 2600 sea level will be roughly 2 meters higher. We can now adjust our building codes to not allow any new construction within 3 meters of the high tide mark, and be semi-confident the structures will be relatively safe from the normal / natural sea level rise. On the other hand, it is quite possible that as we continue to warm, snow will accumulate at the south pole faster, there will be more cloud cover, so there will actually be a negative feedback. I think a 3 meter rule would be a good middle of the road bet for now.

Indeed, but you will notice on your chart TSI has been at record heights for the last 70 out of 420 years on the chart. Then go to your other link on earth’s energy imbalance and note that the ocean is still uptaking heat in positive correlation with the continuing record levels of TSI. The only way to stop this accumulation of heat isn’t minor reductions in TSI but instead major reductions in TSI driving TSI below the levels seen over the past thousand years or so, otherwise it will continue to warm as a recovery from the LIA.

All you need is an understanding that warming or cooling something takes a long time after you turn on the heater or airconditioner. Go into a cold room turn the heater on to the top level at 10 and if it warms like the planet it will take a 1000 years or more to warm up to equilibrium. If 60 years along in the process you turn the heater down to 8 or even 6 its still going to keep warming. 3rd graders understand this David. Why can’t you?

Bill, the entire geosphere is warming. This includes the lithosphere, cryosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, etc. Everything. The heat isn’t just moving around. Literally everything is warming. And the warming rate accelerated about the same time TSI peaked.

“Bill, the entire geosphere is warming. This includes the lithosphere, cryosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, etc. Everything. The heat isnt just moving around. Literally everything is warming. And the warming rate accelerated about the same time TSI peaked.”

Nothing unusual about that bdgwx. Anytime you have a change in external forcing everything is going to start moving in one direction. However, we have essentially no idea of what your saying being correct. For example we don’t measure the bottom half of the oceans at all and we only measure the middle half of the ocean on a very rough scale in comparison to the centennial rate of warming allegedly occurring there that must be adjusted by tidal gauges, tidal gauges that are adjusted for hydrostatic lift based upon models, of ocean warming. The circular reasoning I have seen is quite amazing since the models are “assumed” to be correct and thus it must be observations that are in error bringing on a heavily funded search for errors that create inconsistencies with the models. After all its all about the “best available” science and based upon “declaration” the best available science is the models.

If you don’t understand the implications of this bias you have never really thought about it. But for yet to be validated models, calling them the best science available has effects throughout the system. Its only the ignorant that think they can look at temperature records being managed in these ways and think they provide evidence that the models are correct. We are way past that point and the salaries of millions are fully dependent upon the commitments that governments are making.

“Bill, what external forcing do you think explains the 0.6 W/m^2 imbalance on the planet?”

Thats the trick bdgwx. But with fluctuations on multi-decadal scales in the atmosphere of .8 degree one could readily explain it after seeing that much warming both in the first half of the 20th century and again in the 2nd half.

Mixing zone warming occurs quickly but only makes up about 5% of the ocean mass. The other 95% can take millennia to adjust, thus a few decades are likely to only reduce the imbalance perhaps almost imperceptibly (assuming of course you have a handle on the actual temperature of the ocean, which we don’t).

Using the 95% and the .8 degrees seen in the atmosphere over less than 40 years, twice I would come up with nearly a .75 degree imbalance after 30 years. But if we are overestimating the ocean temperature, which I think we are, maybe it works out to .6.

The LIA and MWP are in time with ice core noise of up to a 2C to 4C fluctuation between major glacial phases on roughly a 400 year scale so that could explain it also if indeed that noise in the data is real instead of just being inaccuracies in the data.

That could put an imbalance at 300 years after the end of the LIA still somewhere between 1.5degrees and 3.5degrees. Large numbers for the ocean that would likely have a smaller effect on an already warm atmosphere. But what have we seen in the last century? .5 degrees after smoothing for short term warming spurts?

This article points out what I have been saying is a major way of climate shystering.
In short – if you make a graph with highly smooth out past temperature data but use the final number as an absolute value which happens to be at high point at this time , you create an incredibly deceptive hockey stick.
And nobody ever calls them out on it.

“the final number as an absolute value which happens to be at high point at this time”
At least we agree that the most recent temperatures represent the result of warming over the last 100 years (even if you disagree about their relative value over 1000 years).

Eben wrote:In short if you make a graph with highly smooth out past temperature data but use the final number as an absolute value which happens to be at high point at this time , you create an incredibly deceptive hockey stick.

“Zharkova uses a technique called principal component analysis to make these predictions. What is everyone’s thoughts on this technique?”

Well believe me or not, but PCA has been the MAJOR REASON for McKittrick and McIntyre to thoroughly discredit, in their first critique, Michael Mann’s hockey schtick paper, oh yes.

Later on, under pressure made by several papers (if I well remember, nine in the sum) literally destroying their PCA based discrediting, they moved down to little details like dendrochronology and the like.

Yep. There’s nothing wrong with PCA. Mann et al (and various others) use PCA in temperature reconstructions as well. And yes, it was determined that the infamous M&M critique had substantial errors. It was never published in a reputable journal being rejected for egregious mistakes that the authors declined to fix. One of McIntyre’s more bizarre claims is that MBH used a dataset upside-down. The WUWT blog even posted an article implying that the whole hockey-stick shape was inverted. Not only is this completely untrue, but even if MBH did mistakenly invert a dataset (they didn’t) it actually wouldn’t have mattered because the technique employed to incorporate the dataset into MBH’s analysis isn’t sensitive to the sign of the data anyway. The whole M&M critique was a fiasco from the start and yet to this day there are countless blogs proclaiming the validity of their various bizarre critiques…makes no sense.

” . . .was published in Nature, the most prestigious journal in the world.”

Appeal to authority much?

How many papers has Nature been forced to retract because they were demonstrably false? The editors stated ” . . .the duty to retract a demonstrably false paper remains paramount.”

Which, of course, leads to the question – why did Nature publish a demonstrably false paper in the first place? One or two might be forgiven – publishing one or two hundred demonstrably false papers might indicate a certain amount of sloppiness, don’t you think?

There is a link between solar activity, cosmic rays, and volcanic activity. Perhaps someday this will be main stream but I get it, you need more proof. But seriously… download the suspicious observers app. Then watch how the notifications for earthquakes come in during space weather.

That said, Perhaps you read in the new Zharkova article that we have 400 year grand cycles, and also super grand cycles. The Maunder Minimum was actually part of a super grand cycle. It means you have multiple time frames to consider here. Within the bottom of the SUPER grand cycle, you have the bottom of the grand solar cycle. So the entire period would have higher volcanic activity, cooler temperatures with the peak occurring during the Maunder Minimum when the cycles on multiple time frames aligned.

I’m sure you are quite aware that volcanic activity has a measureable effect on climate. You can see this effect especially present in the upper atmosphere sat data during the 2 major eruptions since 1980. The upper atmosphere warms while the troposphere cools.

E Swanson wrote (after I declined to criticise the data gathering efforts of Dr Spencer) –

“So, Mikey, do you really want to bet the farm on that latest work from UAH? Sorry, I dont think thats a good idea for the future residents of planet Earth. A scientist must be critical of all the information available, weighing both the good with the bad, in order to find the truth.”

In the usual fashion the pseudoscientific true believer, ES launches into stupidity and silliness, totally avoiding the fact that nobody can even define the “global temperature” – which doesn’t really matter at all, because nobody can usefully describe the GHE, which is stupidly supposed to account for rises in the “global temperature”!

ES refuses to believe, apparently, that thermometers are designed to measure temperature, and that they do this by reacting to “heat”. More “heat”, higher temperatures. This is a simplification of course, and even trying to define “heat” is not as easy as might be assumed.

Be that as it may, surrounding a thermometer with CO2 will not make it hotter.

Increased temperatures result from increased heat around the thermometer. Burning hydrocarbons creates CO2 and H2O at the least. It also creates heat. Misguided people think that the CO2 creates heat, rather than the CO2 being created as a result of the combustion which created the heat.

Of course, all energy created by wind turbines, solar power generation of all types, nuclear processes and so on, eventually becomes low grade waste heat, and is eventually radiated to space – as per the laws of thermodynamics.

Seven billion people create more heat than no people at all. Anthropogenic heat, and plenty of it. Even at night when the Sun doesn’t shine! What is surprising about thermometers reacting to the increased heat?

I would even argue that this heat is measurable. For my state, Michigan, I compared the temperature departures of large metro areas vs small rural communities using the NOAA NOW data and found that the linear temperature up trend is completely absent from many of the smaller communities, weather stations. We do have a measurable effect on global temperatures, but it is concentrated in the high population areas. This is another reason to trust the SAT data over the weather station data when we present the global temperature departures to the public. Also, during the 1980-2016 warming period, the number of hot days actually decreased while the average temperature increased. If CO2 was the cause, you would think the number of hot days would increase along with the average. It seems more than likely that the warm nights have more to do with deforestation and heat islands than co2 or ocean temperatures.

My source is the base noaa data for North America. (as commonly displayed by Tony Heller) I’ve confirmed locally, we indeed match this in Detroit and in Michigan. The number of hot days is in fact decreasing for both days over 80 deg F and days over 90 deg F.

ok… this is where you guys say that this is for North America, and not the world… and this is where I say, North America has the most complete climate record in the world, and can / should be used for proxy data.

Maybe some day this blog will be updated so I can post a chart and not just a link to an article. Maybe a Roy Spencer group facebook page! Hey why not?

I definitely accept proxy data especially when independent analysis corroborates the evidence. I would even accept that proxy records for isolated regions could represent the climate of the entire globe if it can be demonstrated that the climate of a particular region moves in lockstep with the entire Earth. The evidence seems to suggest that this isn’t always the case though. That’s why proxy datasets that aggregate large spatial domains (like entire hemispheres) are more convincing. That certainly doesn’t mean I think they’re infallible.

Mikey responds to my post with more of his classic red herrings. The issue was the validity of UAH processing of satellite data measurements of “temperature” and whether these data represent a monthly “average” when compared with the daily surface measurements using devices called thermometers. This after my reply to his claim that no one can define a global average temperature.

He drifts further from his own question, writing:

Burning hydrocarbons creates CO2 and H2O at the least. It also creates heat. Misguided people think that the CO2 creates heat, rather than the CO2 being created as a result of the combustion which created the heat.

No, Mikey, adding CO2 to the atmosphere doesn’t “create heat”, it slows the flow of thermal energy away from the surface out to deep space, which, in turn, results in a higher surface temperature. Mikey still doesn’t understand the concept of a thermal IR EM radiation shield, which acts as insulation to a heated body, such as I demonstrated with my Green Plate experiments.

The proof is to be found in the laboratory measurements of the absorp_tion-emission characteristics of the greenhouse gases, (especially CO2 and H2O), which are also evidenced in the atmospheric spectral measurements of IR EM transmission and absor_ption. The insulating effect results from the action of these properties acting thru multiple layers of the atmosphere from the surface to the TOA.

E. Swanson says:
“The insulating effect results from the action of these properties acting thru multiple layers of the atmosphere from the surface to the TOA.”

Well such an insulating effect does exist in solids. It doesn’t exist in liquids. Why would it suddenly reappear in a gas, which has the characteristics of liquids?

A liquid has even more layers as the molecules are more like a solid in terms of spacing. What happens Swanson as the gas molecules as they widen their spacing suddenly begin to radiate and take on a different heat transfer effect? As I understand it the model assumes convection does not change, which effectively from the standpoint of variation makes it a solid. Doesn’t sound like a reasonable hypothesis to me.

B Hunter, In fluids (that’s both liquids and gases), convection usually dominates. But, depending on the circumstance, water can be an insulator. A prime example is the temperature profile of the oceans, with a relatively thin layer of warm water on top of deeper layers that are much colder, near freezing. If water did not exhibit an insulating effect, i.e., water were a good conductor of thermal energy, I think that temperature difference would have vanished long ago, resulting in a nearly constant temperature with depth. The reason that the warmth is on the surface is the reduced density of that layer, a symptom of natural convection.

Air is an excellent insulator, a fact which is the reason fiberglass insulation works as it does. The fiberglass impedes the motion of the air molecules within the matrix, which would otherwise move energy via convection. Double pane glass also employs this property, with the small distance between the two panes suppressing the formation of vertical convective “cells” within the structure.

The early models of atmospheric energy flow were termed “Radiative-Convective” to capture both processes operating at the same time.

“B Hunter, In fluids (thats both liquids and gases), convection usually dominates. But, depending on the circumstance, water can be an insulator. A prime example is the temperature profile of the oceans, with a relatively thin layer of warm water on top of deeper layers that are much colder, near freezing. If water did not exhibit an insulating effect, i.e., water were a good conductor of thermal energy, I think that temperature difference would have vanished long ago, resulting in a nearly constant temperature with depth. The reason that the warmth is on the surface is the reduced density of that layer, a symptom of natural convection.”

You can’t ignore chosen means of heat transfer and make such an argument. The ocean bottoms are cold precisely because of convection. The convection overrides all other means of heat transfer. The ocean undoubtedly gets cold primarily due to very cold brines being squeezed out of freezing seawater, dropping to the bottom of the ocean at a rate much faster than conduction from the surface can eliminate it.

If you study window technology you will find that a single convective/radiative break has zero net effect in a system of multiple means of energy transfer as a resistance factor of two means of energy transfer of .5 adds up to 1.0 or zero insulation.

Most likely in our atmosphere outside of the atmospheric window frequencies, you have zero or next to zero radiative heat transfer and you have convection occurring all the way to TOA with zero resistance (or 1.0 resistance). Zero plus one still equals one like .5 plus .5 equals one.

Someone needs to really study this problem. You go to NOAA’s evidence page and all they have are Tyndall and Arrhenius. Its not enough.

B. Hunter, The thermohaline convection in the oceans is indeed a function of the densification of the surface water due to both the high salt content of the North Atlantic and the very cold temperatures at high latitudes in Winter. Brine rejection adds to the process, thus there’s sinking around the Antarctic. But, that process is heavily influenced by the insulating effect of water, which slows the diffusion of thermal energy to deeper layers. My comment addressed what might occur if water didn’t exhibit a conductivity of 0.5918 W/m/K, which is about 13 times fiberglass, but only 0.25% that of aluminum. If water were a better conductor, the vertical temperature profile would be different, as would be the THC sinking.

The R-value of a single pane of glass is about 0.9, whereas the R-Value of the glazing in a double pane window is about 2.0 for a gap of 0.5 inches, as I recall. Increasing the gap results in an increase in R-Value, so the air (or other gas) does have an insulating effect.

You suggest that there’s convection all the way to TOA, which is false. In the stratosphere, convection is suppressed because the temperature increases with altitude and there’s almost no water vapor. Perhaps you are thinking of the troposphere.

You wrote:

Someone needs to really study this problem. You go to NOAAs evidence page and all they have are Tyndall and Arrhenius. Its not enough.

Did you read the paper I linked to? There are text books written on the radiative heat transfer in the atmosphere. Not a new subject by any means, but if one wants to get deeper into it, the math can become difficult, which is one reason I’m still trying to read two sitting next to my bed.

E. Swanson says:
“If water were a better conductor, the vertical temperature profile would be different, as would be the THC sinking.”

If? Fact is the ocean is 14c on average colder than the atmosphere that wraps it and no relief is obtained by exposure to the ocean bottom warmed by a hot core. That difference must be cold brine infusion, unless you can think of something else.

E. Swanson says:
“The R-value of a single pane of glass is about 0.9, whereas the R-Value of the glazing in a double pane window is about 2.0 for a gap of 0.5 inches, as I recall. Increasing the gap results in an increase in R-Value, so the air (or other gas) does have an insulating effect.”

Actually not really. Widening the gap reduces constriction on convection (tightening the convection loop so you get turbulence slowing air flow), the idea is to narrow the gap until conduction begins to override gains on restricting convection. Narrow gap windows have better performance than wide gap. I doubt the 1/2″ number is nothing more than an approximation of best efficiency.

E. Swanson says:
“You suggest that theres convection all the way to TOA, which is false. In the stratosphere, convection is suppressed because the temperature increases with altitude and theres almost no water vapor. Perhaps you are thinking of the troposphere.”

Well if TOA is not well into the troposphere then the current greenhouse theory wouldn’t be measurable and increasing the height of TOA only creates a greenhouse effect if it gets colder with altitude. Otherwise you are shooting darts with a blindfold. But hey that’s what I think they are doing anyway and all the dire warnings are simply designed to keep the blindfold dart game going.

Actually the whole tale reminds me of the Ptolemy Theory, just keep adding stuff until you get to a place you can’t be proven wrong. . . .God does exist you know and there is scientific evidence of that fact.

B Hunter, I’m disappointed that you asked for “Someone needs to really study this problem”, but apparently not made the effort to read the Ramanathan paper which describes efforts to accomplish exactly that. As anyone who has studied atmospheric science would tell you, it’s complicated and requires some detailed understanding of the math to appreciate the models which have steadily evolved with improvements added as the available computing power has made it possible to run them.

Your next comments display your ignorance of the thermal properties of double pane windows, something well known for decades. Increasing the gap from 1/4″, to 1/2″ and the to 3/4″ increases the R-Value thru the panes. The same is true for poly-carbonate greenhouse glazing as well.

Then you wrote:

Well if TOA is not well into the troposphere then the current greenhouse theory wouldnt be measurable and increasing the height of TOA only creates a greenhouse effect if it gets colder with altitude.

You again appear to be confusing the tropopause with the Top of the Atmosphere (TOA), i.e., well outside the the upper reaches of the atmosphere. TOA might be defined as the altitude where satellites can stay in orbit for an extended period, because there are so few molecules that the aerodynamic drag is tiny.

“Your next comments display your ignorance of the thermal properties of double pane windows, something well known for decades. Increasing the gap from 1/4″, to 1/2″ and the to 3/4″ increases the R-Value thru the panes. The same is true for poly-carbonate greenhouse glazing as well.”

Actually 1/2″ is an approximation of maximum efficiency no doubt with some rounding. One source says: “typically, most sealed units achieve maximum insulating values using a space of 1619 mm (0.630.75 in)”.

So you are in the correct range of maximum R, but maximum R is only one factor, cost of producing windows is another and wider gaps mean more materials for extremely marginal increases in insulating efficiency. So overall efficiency is somewhat less than maximum R efficiency and the choice is to go to triple glazing instead of maximizing the gap R value.

E. Swanson says:
“You again appear to be confusing the tropopause with the Top of the Atmosphere (TOA), i.e., well outside the the upper reaches of the atmosphere. TOA might be defined as the altitude where satellites can stay in orbit for an extended period, because there are so few molecules that the aerodynamic drag is tiny.”

No you are the one confused. TOA is used to mean many different things and is commonly used as the virtual radiating surface of the top of the atmosphere as seen from at least satellites. Raising the radiating surface to produce less radiation to space requires that all in all TOA be colder with the elevation of the radiative TOA. Technically, I could be wrong using TOA but note it is commonly used throughout the blogosphere as an abbreviation of that virtual radiating surface. If you prefer I will change the term to fit your understanding what that radiating surface is so as to avoid your confusion with what I am saying.

B Hunter, The use of some effective radiating height by some is an over simplification, as there are different “heights” for different wavelengths in the IR EM spectrum. Under clear sky conditions, in the “atmospheric window”, the radiation originates from the surface. In the water vapor bands, it would be higher up and clouds would exhibit a level near the tropopause, I suppose. The emissions from CO2 would exhibit another emission height, so I suggest that you need to dig deeper into the science, if you want to find what you claim to be seeking.

“B Hunter, The use of some effective radiating height by some is an over simplification, as there are different heights for different wavelengths in the IR EM spectrum. Under clear sky conditions, in the atmospheric window, the radiation originates from the surface. In the water vapor bands, it would be higher up and clouds would exhibit a level near the tropopause, I suppose. The emissions from CO2 would exhibit another emission height, so I suggest that you need to dig deeper into the science, if you want to find what you claim to be seeking.”

You are no help there. I called it a virtual radiating surface precisely because of the height variability depending upon the frequency of the radiation. . . .and to raise the virtual surface you only need to raise one frequency or more.

I called it a virtual radiating surface precisely because of the height variability depending upon the frequency of the radiation. . . .and to raise the virtual surface you only need to raise one frequency or more.

This follows his previous statement:

Raising the radiating surface to produce less radiation to space requires that all in all TOA be colder with the elevation of the radiative TOA.

But, the problem with this is that the amount of energy leaving the TOA must equal that arriving from the Sun. Other things being equal (which they are not), the amount of IR EM leaving would be a constant. But, there are other effects from AGW, such as changes in albedo from snow and ice, plus changes in cloud cover. I don’t see that it’s a necessary result that less IR EM would be exiting the TOA. When one begins to dissect the spectral emissions, there’s no single temperature found in the data, as seen in graphs of data from satellites like that which DA posted in a comment below. If there is a decrease in outgoing IR EM in the CO2 bands, there must be more leaving via the other pathways.

Climate change isn’t a simple problem. To understand the changes, one must first understand climate and also weather, which is something that requires considerable effort, as in, reading the literature. Pierrehumberts text book captures much of the relevant information, which is the reason I linked to it. You haven’t commented on my suggestions for further reading, so I assume you haven’t looked at either. Sorry, if you don’t do the homework, you are going to get the wrong answers.

E. Swanson says:
“If there is a decrease in outgoing IR EM in the CO2 bands, there must be more leaving via the other pathways.”

Thats correct but thats a big “If”.

E. Swanson says:
“Climate change isn’t a simple problem. To understand the changes, one must first understand climate and also weather, which is something that requires considerable effort, as in, reading the literature.”

LMAO, so revert here to the veiled insult that one has simply not read the explanation in lieu of an explanation. I would suggest you can’t explain it. You can only speculate about it.

E. Swanson says:
“Pierrehumberts text book captures much of the relevant information, which is the reason I linked to it. You haven’t commented on my suggestions for further reading, so I assume you haven’t looked at either. Sorry, if you don’t do the homework, you are going to get the wrong answers.”

Well I am not going to spend $60 to buy his book. If one needs 600plus pages to explain how TOA forces the surface other than resorting to 600 pages to explain a “missing heat” conundrum it must be a con. Its especially interesting when one does not need to look far for the missing heat. Its being delivered parcel post to TOA by convection where whats there simply radiates away to space and gets replenished once a day.

If nothing else were going on the approximate 200 watts being radiated by the atmosphere is actually a bit more than the .5 resistance one might attribute to a “single” convective heat transfer break. Or at least its close enough considering how difficult it is to actually establish mean values of emissivity, convection, evaporation/transpiration, and estimate the amount of imbalance currently in the system from whatever effects are out there. Even mean temperature is suspect since unless its a satellite its being gathered from a non-representative sample and if its a satellite folks are arguing over stuff like drift apparently mostly because it doesn’t comport to conventional wisdom’s view of how to model the atmosphere. . . .the same problem with ocean buoys, tidal gauges, etc.

Its especially interesting when one does not need to look far for the missing heat. Its being delivered parcel post to TOA by convection where whats there simply radiates away to space and gets replenished once a day.

I think that you are wrong. Vertical convection above the tropopause is limited by the fact that the lapse rate is positive. Of course, intense vertical motions from thunderstorms do penetrate the stratosphere, but then we get to the second part of your comment. In the range of wavelengths corresponding to temperatures in the stratosphere, only the greenhouse gases can emit IR EM to deep space, not O2 or N2. Since most of the water vapor has been removed relative to the troposphere, that pathway is limited. That leaves CO2, methane and O3 as the main pathways outbound from these levels. The dip in the graphic I linked to exhibits this effect.

But, look at a different graphic, one plotted against wavelength, things are a bit clearer. The area between about 8 to 13 microns is the “atmospheric window”, which allows IR from the surface to pass directly to deep space. The effect of CO2 is to reduce the transmission thru the window. Furthermore, the emissions occur 24/7/365, though during the day the Sun warms things so that the continual cooling isn’t noticeable.

I suggest that if you want to present an effective argument, then you need to understand the science, which means you should move beyond the blogosphere and read the literature.

Well I am not going to spend $60 to buy his book. If one needs 600plus pages to explain how TOA forces the surface other than resorting to 600 pages to explain a missing heat conundrum it must be a con.

Well I am not going to spend $60 to buy his book. If one needs 600plus pages to explain how TOA forces the surface other than resorting to 600 pages to explain a missing heat conundrum it must be a con.

now a claim that the humbert text is the Holy Book of climate change! If I don’t read God’s version of how the world was created in uh 4 billion years or whatever, I will never understand the truth!

Gee sounds amazingly similar to the obfuscation of the fact you can’t explain the physical forcing that supports climate alarmism either but simply obediently obey its commands like they were written in stone by the finger of God.

Svante says:
June 30, 2019 at 4:23 PM
You spend hours spouting nonsense, but have no time to learn. Can you give him six minutes?
_______________
You seem prone to spout generalities and both you and Humbert provides no proof for his pontifications.

So please do specifically offer some nonsense you would like me to clear up for you. I would love to do it but can’t unless you actually abstain from generalities.

And yes I watched the video and I am way beyond that.
Nobody can prove or disprove the atmosphere operates essentially like a single pane window and that it is currently approximately performing like that right now. Can you prove that’s just a coincidence?

Keep in mind in my profession I see these kinds of arguments a lot, mankind is an ingenious critter, promise a life long comfortable career for the more ingenious members to come up with a politically correct answer by the folks that pay their salaries and send them of world-wide junkets to exotic locations and danged if they can’t get that job done! And even ensure there is no way to disprove it, especially when you can just simply modify it when somebody does prove one of the earlier versions wrong. Part of the common strategy is keep the theory inspecific making it difficult to design targeted experiments.

So what we have settled for is a wide range of specific but very different models hoping to identify a very small signal in a messy environment that should keep the whole thing going at least through the end of ones career.

And that brings us to the other issue which I see constructed exactly like the science issue. That is the alarm sounding negative outcomes of global warming. The planet is getting greener, the planet has been getting warmer from whatever cause on a planet where human populations are centered near the equator because the other ends of the planet are too dang cold.

Yet somehow out of this whole scenario its all going to be bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad! When the truth is its probably good. But that’s business as usual for power seeking governments and they sure have you stooged.

So please do specifically offer some nonsense you would like me to clear up for you.

Just now:

Nobody can prove or disprove the atmosphere operates essentially like a single pane window and that it is currently approximately performing like that right now. Can you prove that’s just a coincidence?

Nobody can prove or disprove the atmosphere operates essentially like a single pane window and that it is currently approximately performing like that right now. Can you prove thats just a coincidence?

Well, the atmospheric processes don’t “work like a single pane of glass”, but many layers acting in parallel from the surface to the TOA. You can clearly see these layers in images from weather satellites, which show the horizontal motions at different levels to be in contrasting directions, evidencing the effects of convection. You can also observe the effects in the IR EM spectrum measurements taken at satellite altitudes (i.e. at the TOA) and at ground level. IR spectral measurements part way thru the atmosphere demonstrate regional effects as well, with images available both day and night.

Assessing the effects of climate change is separate from the scientific studies and the authors of the IPCC reports have recognized this by presenting products in three divisions, starting with the scientific assessment. One may disagree with the assessments of the impacts, which are built on the scientific understanding, but the scientific facts are well supported by decades of scientific research. Whether the subtotal of all the impacts are “all going to be bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad” (as you wrote), or beneficial is a major part of the political debate, since some regions may experience a benefit while other regions are hammered.

“Roy Spencer showed it here:”
___________
Yes he does Svante, he shows it works essentially like a single pane of glass, a basic greenhouse.

E. Swanson says:

“Well, the atmospheric processes dont work like a single pane of glass, but many layers acting in parallel from the surface to the TOA.
You can clearly see these layers in images from weather satellites, which show the horizontal motions at different levels to be in contrasting directions, evidencing the effects of convection.”
_____
Well yeah Swanson, thats essentially how a greenhouse works with a single pane of glass stopping convection, in this case the outer extent of the atmosphere stops the convection inside of the convecting zone you have all that sort of movement going on.

E. Swanson says:

“The weather satellite images dont picture the CO2 emission wavelengths, as they are saturated, but one can see different visualizations by selecting the animation loops for different wavelengths, which represent different heights.”
____________
Sure, I agree, the pane of glass is virtual and varies in altitude. The only interesting aspect is the pane of glass is emitting more than what one would expect. That makes little sense for an atmosphere that is supposed to emit less than a pane of glass but possibly its major problems with radiation budgets due to our lack of knowledge about emissivity on world scales or it may, perhaps more likely, have something to do with the release of latent heat by water as water vapor tends to supercool before condensing and rapidly warming to the freezing point.

E. Swanson says:
“but the scientific facts are well supported by decades of scientific research.”
____________
Yes indeed for the facts you choose to look at, or I should say look for as corruption in the non-independent science community tends to suppress what they want to suppress.

E. Swanson says:
“Whether the subtotal of all the impacts are all going to be bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad (as you wrote), or beneficial is a major part of the political debate.”
_____
Its all politics Swanson. Zero science, just that there isn’t a political debate in the world on natural systems that doesn’t claim to be science oriented whether it is or it isn’t. I can’t prove my model and you can’t prove yours. So until one can it will remain 100% of political debate. And make no mistake about its a debate about your personal freedom whether it should be allowed or not.

My own personal thought on the matter isn’t personal as I am too old to be concerned about that, its ignorantly restricting freedoms and the effect that will have on human progress without any justification. Every action and every non-action will have consequences, in the history of the world the lack of freedom of action has had by far the worst consequences though I do have a friend who thinks we would all be better off living in a cave and dying at age 30.

Well yeah Swanson, thats essentially how a greenhouse works with a single pane of glass stopping convection, in this case the outer extent of the atmosphere stops the convection inside of the convecting zone you have all that sort of movement going on.

A single pane of glass stops most of the convection, but there’s convection on both sides, so energy flows thru the glass, depending on the temperature difference. Also, glass is a good asorber-emitter of IR EM, enhancing the transmission from one side to the other, so the glass can also act as a radiation shield. I don’t know why you are fixated on a single pane of glass, as it’s long been known that the using a greenhouse as a model for AGW is not scientifically accurate.

Later, you wrote:

Its all politics Swanson. Zero science, just that there isn’t a political debate in the world on natural systems that doesn’t claim to be science oriented whether it is or it isn’t. I can’t prove my model and you can’t prove yours.

The proof of the models of climate change is their ability to reproduce historical climate. From what I’ve read, they do a remarkable job. You may object that they don’t all match the satellite temperature records precisely, but some are better than others, so I think their results should be taken seriously.

You also wrote:

And make no mistake about its a debate about your personal freedom whether it should be allowed or not.

But cries about loss of “personal freedom” are political, an illusion in the modern world where most people now live in cities. The more people there are in one area, the more rules are needed just to keep them from running into each other or otherwise causing harm. Witness the gun debate in the US or the “yellow vests” protests in France.

E. Swanson says:
“I dont know why you are fixated on a single pane of glass, as its long been known that the using a greenhouse as a model for AGW is not scientifically accurate.”

E. Swanson says:
“I dont know why you are fixated on a single pane of glass, as its long been known that the using a greenhouse as a model for AGW is not scientifically accurate.”

Yep somebody determined that the minute the found out it didn’t support the theory. . . .and that was after naming it as a science theory. Real science there.

E. Swanson says:
“The proof of the models of climate change is their ability to reproduce historical climate. From what Ive read, they do a remarkable job. You may object that they dont all match the satellite temperature records precisely, but some are better than others, so I think their results should be taken seriously.”

The models have done a terrible job creating the 1940’s warming period and instead they decided to search for hot errors in it cooling the record some and still doesn’t fit.

As to previous epochs where oceans have had the millennia or so to outgas CO2, CO2 trails warming. Outgassing is very slow because ocean turnover is low and CO2 is deficient in the photic zone of the ocean because of photosynthesis.

E. Swanson says:
“But cries about loss of personal freedom are political, an illusion in the modern world where most people now live in cities. The more people there are in one area, the more rules are needed just to keep them from running into each other or otherwise causing harm. Witness the gun debate in the US or the yellow vests protests in France.”

I was not talking about rules of order. Science should not lead policy it should only inform it. It utterly and completely fails in that mission when it spreads so much uncertainty as being certain.

The proof is in the 150+ years of thermopile and infrared spectroscopy experiments, molecular physics and quantum mechanics theory that explains the results, the paleoclimate record which uses the entire Earth as the experimental apparatus, etc. There are so many nails in the coffin in this regard I’m not sure there’s enough room to fit another.

bdgwx says:
“The proof is in the 150+ years of thermopile and infrared spectroscopy experiments, molecular physics and quantum mechanics theory that explains the results, the paleoclimate record which uses the entire Earth as the experimental apparatus, etc.”

The “Good Book” says. . . .right bdgwx?

You actually buy that gibberish? I can acknowledge that greenhouse gases are necessary for the surface greenhouse effect, but their existence alone isn’t a sufficient explanation for the validating any particular process of creating a greenhouse effect. Its obvious the current popular theory was arrived at in the same way the Ptolemy Theory was arrived at. . . .e.g. similar to noting that the sun always rises in the east and sets in the west.

I’m not sure what religious texts have to do with anything, but if the measurements taken as part of countless thermopile and infrared spectroscopy experiments, molecular physics and quantum mechanics experiments, and the paleoclimate record do not rise to your standard then could tell us what kinds of measurements and evidence you are looking for?

bdgwx says:
“but if the measurements taken as part of countless thermopile and infrared spectroscopy experiments, molecular physics and quantum mechanics experiments, and the paleoclimate record do not rise to your standard then could tell us what kinds of measurements and evidence you are looking for?”

Bill, yeah, I get that you aren’t satisfied with the hundreds of thousands of hits I get on google scholar when I search for “carbon dioxide infrared spectroscopy” or the HITRAN database. What I’m asking is how do you define “substantial” evidence that would convince you? What kind of experiment would be convincing to you?

“Bill, yeah, I get that you arent satisfied with the hundreds of thousands of hits I get on google scholar when I search for carbon dioxide infrared spectroscopy or the HITRAN database. What Im asking is how do you define substantial evidence that would convince you? What kind of experiment would be convincing to you?”

LOL! Engineers love engineered products because unlike the carpenter who actually sees the wood’s imperfections there are huge uncertainties in all of nature. Thus volumes of tables and measurements are completely lacking in the absence of an engineered blueprint specifying specific grades of products. No blueprint of the greenhouse effect has been produced because even the proponents of the most popular theory argue over specifics. So a blueprint of the theory in one single volume would be what I would like to see as I am not dazzled by popularity, numbers of funded studies, nor any other non-science measure.

“No, Mikey, adding CO2 to the atmosphere doesn’t “create heat”, it slows the flow of thermal energy away from the surface out to deep space, which, in turn, results in a higher surface temperature.”

Unfortunately, over the last four and a half billion years, the surface temperature has dropped, not risen.

You might be trying to invent a magical one way insulator, which allows energy in one direction unimpeded, but restricts the flow in the opposite direction. This is just pseudoscientific nonsense, and supported with meaningless gibberish about SWIR, DWLWIR, and all the rest of the nonsensical dimwitted climatological hot air.

Neither you nor anyone else can actually describe this supposed GHE in any useful way.

No GHE. Insulation is passive, and merely impedes the flow of heat from hotter to colder. The Sun is hotter than the Earth’s surface, and the Earth’s surface is hotter than deep space. The one applies when the surface is exposed to the Sun, the other applies at night.

The net result is gradual cooling, as the Earth’s history over the last four and half billion years shows.

My assumption is that the Earth’s surface was originally molten, although you deny this. Deny away, it won’t change a single thing.

The surface is no longer molten.

It has cooled. It has been four and a half billion years since the surface was molten, at most. The temperature drop from the molten state, divided by the number of years involved, shows that the average drop was small – gradual, rather than precipitous, in the view of most reasonable people.

Cherry pick away. You seem to belief in some magical mechanism which makes things hotter and colder, merely by exposing them to CO2!

The surface has cooled. Four and a half billion years of sunlight and varying atmospheric composition notwithstanding. Deny, divert, and confuse all you want. Facts are facts.

No CO2 heating. No GHE – not you can actually describe this amazingly magical creation! All you can do if flap nonsensical graphics in people’s faces, shouting “Evidence! Evidence!”

What “theory” would that be? I merely pointed out an obvious fact. If you don’t want to accept the evidence of your own lyin’ eyes, be my guest.

The rest of your rambling is a product of your fantasy, and your bizarre attempts to rebut things that I didn’t write!

Typical of pseudoscientific climate cult members – never let facts get in the way of a good fantasy. No GHE. No CO2 heating. No accumulated heat after four and a half billion years of sunlight. The surface cooled. Bad luck for you.

There is no evidence for something that you cannot even describe! The Earth has cooled, you ninny.

Look between your feet (if your rotundity gets in the way, use a mirror), and tell me if the surface is molten. No? What happened to your GHE? Maybe it was hiding for the last four and a half billion years or so, do you think?

Carry on with the gotchas. Maybe someone will pay you for them, some day. Or maybe not?

Why are you so stupid and ignorant? How do you arrive at the conclusion that I sleep under one or more blankets?

Next you will be asking me why my house is insulated, when I don’t even possess any useful means of heating said house. I obviously don’t live in your fantasy world.

Why do you keep asking such stupid questions? Do you suffer from some form of OCD?

If you are truly seeking answers to questions you are unable to answer, just provide some evidence that you have made sincere efforts to find answers for yourself. I will be glad to help, if you admit that I am the only source of knowledge you have left.

Before one pretends that the LIA is due to so called Grand Solar Minima, it would be useful to look at possible alternatives, the first of all being the rather tremendous sequence of strong volcanic eruptions, starting wit

Hekla, Island 1104, VEI 4 followed by 30 further eruptions at the same place

Folks, El Nino is now at a negative departure: -0.025 deg c compared to the 1981-2010 average. As of this morning. You could wait until these new readings drop the 3 month averages to officially declare El Nino has ended, but I’m telling you… El Nino HAS ended. If you go out on the Pacific right now, no El Nino. Bottom line.

That being said, there is a direct relationship between the sun and El Nino. Both follow the 11 year solar cycle in a completely predictable way. As I mentioned several weeks ago, the coming La Nina will drop the global temperature average to -0.2 deg c in short time with no volcanic forcing.

You can see the 11 year cycle by applying a 5 year moving average to the El Nino data. As pointed out previously, there are clear harmonics at 2.2 and 3.6 years. The 3.6 year harmonic has ended, and we are dropping like a rock. Basically we are in the power wave down right now!

“Also, during the 1980-2016 warming period, the number of hot days actually decreased while the average temperature increased.”

I’m not at all interested in your CO2 blah blah. Just because, as you yourself pointed out,

“My source is the base noaa data for North America. (as commonly displayed by Tony Heller) Ive confirmed locally, we indeed match this in Detroit and in Michigan.”

And it should be evident to anybody having a brain that it is bare nonsense to restrict a comparison of CO2 and temperature to about 6 % of Earth’s land surface, let alone with the total including the oceans.

A commenter asked for the same job worldwide, and thus I thought: why not to first do the same for CONUS but with the GHCN daily source instead of USHCN which exists in the US only, and then to extend worldwide?

The entire historical climate record has been assembled using proxy data for a few locations. Basically by your logic, no data prior to the 1980 sat data should be excepted anywhere for global temperature departure. So how exactly does one calculate the GLOBAL temperature departure baseline when you’ve only captured 1/2 of 1 AMO / PDO cycle?

Check mate.

As far as El Nino… like I said. Take the data. Apply a 5 year moving average to it. Get an 11 year cycle. It’s that simple, really. Now check the harmonics – 2.2 and 3.6 years. It’s too perfect Bindidon. The sun is controlling everything.

By the way, we FINALLY hit 90 today in Detroit for the first time this year, although I’ll wait for the official noaa data. In 1988 we hit 90 9 times by June 17th. These are the only years we didn’t hit 90 by Jun 28th:
81, 82, 85, 93, 10, 13.

“The entire historical climate record has been assembled using proxy data for a few locations. Basically by your logic, no data prior to the 1980 sat data should be excepted anywhere for global temperature departure.”

Where the heck did I write that? What do you mean with this stupid sentence?

Here is a graph showing the worldwide GHCN daily station activity distribution over the years, including the number of 2.5 degree grid cells containing them:

Bindidon you missed my whole point. You were criticizing me for using us data as proxy. The us data goes back to the late 1800s this is very helpful proxy data. I replied if we can’t use proxy data to calculate global temperature, you can only take sat data since 1980 since all global data is basically proxy prior to the sat record. Then you post a chart showing the number of weather stations SINCE 1980. You are missing the point. There are natural cycles here of significant amplitude that you are not capturing with 40 years of data regardless of its source. That is why I will laugh as the global temperature drops to -0.2 deg c in time for the election. Is that what they mean by the Al Gore effect?

Let me ask you something. Have you ever compared your local base Noaa data? I mean the stations within 300 miles of your house. The reason I ask is I suspect that you will find in your area like I found in mine that the strongest up trends are in developing areas on average. Weather stations where population growth was close to 0 have had very little warming. So what am I getting at here? Adding more weather stations to the global data base isn’t going to make the summarized data more accurate. You are adding in the fastest growing areas and thus capturing the effect of deforestation and heat islands and creating a false trend. Just yesterday, I was about 3 miles from Detroit- temperature measured was 85. By the time I got home it was 73. 1/2 hour drive. So how do we address the issue? For one, that is why I am here. I believe Dr Spencer’s data is data we can actually trust. The methodology is always the same, and the coverage – planet wide. Why do you suppose that the ONLY location without a trend is Antarctica? There is no development there! Antarctica IS our control group for the planet. A true gage on what CO2 is actually doing. Please keep in mind ice cores taken from Antarctica are used all the time for proxy on the long time frames, so why not short? So we MUST ACCEPT Antarctica data as our control group for planet earth.

Anyways… I want to continue to talk to people that disagree with me. I don’t claim to be better or smarter than anyone. But the sun has been in it’s most active phase for the last 70 years! Only now does it look like it will be dropping. Fasten your seat belts. Things are about to get really interesting.

Scott R, Applying a moving average to a data set will alias the 5 year period into the resulting time series. I suspect it will also distort the shorter periods as well. Did you apply a trailing average or a centered one? You might try some of the better digital filters as the results from your analysis may be bogus. you should also be aware that the sunspot cycle isn’t a fixed 11 year period and that’s only half of the 22 year (mol) magnetic reversal cycle. Worse, there’s data from satellites which indicate that the variation in solar energy (aka, the Solar Constant) reaching the Earth is small and is mostly confined to the ultraviolet portion of the spectrum.